June 29 2006, 11:51

First wholesale shipments of Ukrainian blueberry entered markets

According to information provided to "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" journal by Anatoliy Yarovoy, the Price Monitoring Specialist of the Agricultural Marketing Project, first wholesale shipments of blueberry have entered Kyiv market today. Market players say that first wholesale shipment of wild blueberry arrived from Chernivtsi oblast. The wholesale price for early blueberry is $2.74/kg today; however, market players think the price will go significantly down just when the harvesting season reaches its peak.

Nevertheless, the Agricultural Marketing Project has already reported that the competition for wild blueberry is growing year by year on Ukrainian market. This year foreign companies are showing their interest to this market as well. Blueberry is gathered by local people; then the product is frozen on flash-freezing enterprises and exported to the EU countries. There is a backlog deficit for blueberry on EU market. The result is that wholesale prices for blubbery are growing annually on Ukrainian market.

The other factor for price growth is the constantly increasing incomes of Ukrainian population. As a result, less people are interested to pick blueberry; to have people interested purchasers are forced to pay more. At the same time, many world countries are actively building up industrial blueberry production. Past year European prices for this berry somewhat stabilized due to supply growth.

That's why, to the opinion of the experts of the Agricultural Marketing Project, the prices for blueberry will probably be higher than a year ago. Past year the wholesale price for blueberry fluctuated within $1.17-1.56/kg.