Usually among the most expensive fruits in the supermarket, blueberries are defying price pressures. Here’s why.
Only about three out of five Australian households buy at least one punnet of blueberries in a year, but that could change after prices for the fruit plummeted this summer, despite broaderRabobank associate analyst Pia Piggott said “fruit deflation” during summer was part, but not all, of the reason behind the drop in prices.Shutterstock
On average, buyers who consume blueberries add them to their trolley eight times a year, spending about $4.60 each time. Bob Benning, co-owner of Benning Blueberries in Coffs Harbour, said his farm wasn’t producing at peak capacity, but that rain had delayed the growing and harvesting cycle across farms in the area.“We usually stagger production, even on our own farms, but the wet weather has caused peak production to come in at the same time across different areas,” he said.It’s a trend that Piggott said she’d seen with other produce, particularly stone fruits, this year.
Blueberry production has more than doubled in the five years to 2021 in Australia, but almost all of that produce is consumed domestically. “We don’t have a lot of access to high-value markets globally, and it’s hard to compete because of our high production costs and because the markets we can get into are ‘non-protocol’.”
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