• The growing volumes of citrus from the southern hemisphere at very low prices complicates the departure of satsumas and early clementines and delays the departure of Navelina oranges, with very low field and warehouse prices and increasingly high costs.
• It reiterates that the origin of the crisis lies in the lack of reciprocity: the South African SMI, which was recently raised, is nine times lower than the Spanish one and in Egypt it is also cheaper.
• The interprofessional insists on demanding an urgent meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, which it requested on 16 September and has not yet received a reply.

The Spanish Citrus Interbranch organization formally and personally requested the general director of the Agrifood Industry of the Ministry of Agriculture, Jose Miguel Herrero, to hold an urgent meeting with the minister of the sector on September 16. The organization made the request personally to Herrero at the General Assembly in which Inmaculada Sanfeliu was appointed president of the CGC. After almost a month and a half without having received an answer to their request, last Friday, the members of Intercitrus stressed that this meeting was urgent given the market’s situation. The member organizations want to talk to Minister Planas about the serious problems there were at the beginning of the campaign, which started at the end of the previous campaign, because of the oversupply of citrus generated by the massive imports from the southern hemisphere at very low prices, which are unattainable for the Spanish sector. Third country citrus producers don’t have to comply with the same working, phytosanitary, environmental, and human rights conditions that European producers must follow, which makes their offer more competitive than the EU’s offer. This process is accelerating the progressive loss of competitiveness of Spanish oranges and mandarins in the Community market. 

The strong increase in production costs is coinciding with a sharp drop in prices in the fields and in warehouses. “This cheap offer has really complicated the exit of the early Spanish satsumas and clementines and it is delaying the placing of the first oranges of the season, fundamentally of the Navelina variety,” the interbranch organization stated.

According to the provisional data from Eurostat, between January and August of this year, Egypt has exported a record 335,135 tons of citrus to the EU, the highest figure in its history, which is 21% higher than in the same period of last year and 51% higher than in 2017. By August of this year, South Africa exported 430,351 tons to the EU, their second-largest record in the aforementioned period to date and 33.5% higher than four years ago. And given the difficult circumstances this summer in the middle of the shipping season in this southern country – with serious disturbances at the end of July and even after suffering a blockade of the port terminals in Durban, its main port of departure – it is foreseeable that South African citrus exports to the EU in September will be especially high because a large part of what could not be packed and transported in August is known to have been done hastily during the past month. The end of last season was extremely complicated because Egypt extended its orange campaign to Europe with higher volumes at very low prices and now South Africa extended their campaign at the beginning of this season.  As a result, for months now, the Dutch and German cold stores have been full of oranges and, to a lesser extent, foreign mandarins, which have left no room for the Spanish supply. The worst part is that the large European distribution is getting used to prices we’re unable to compete with, and this season could consolidate the process of supplier substitution that has already begun,” stated Sanfeliu.

Intercitrus recently denounced that South Africa, given the high numbers of European port interceptions for ‘Citrus Black Spot’, is combating this pest by resorting to the less suitable but cheaper fungicides, reducing costs at the cost of an increased risk of spreading the disease to European plantations. Egypt, for its part, has accumulated up to 39 food alerts so far in 2021 – an unprecedented number – because its citrus fruit consignments were found to either exceed maximum residue limits or contain fruit treated with pesticides banned to European farmers, such as Chlorpyrifos or Methylchlorpyrifos. With such insecticides, which are banned in the EU, Egypt is able to unfairly reduce pest losses in its production. Two other facts speak volumes about the lack of reciprocity on labour costs: the South African agricultural minimum wage was recently raised to 21.69 rand (1.2 euros) per hour, a figure almost nine times lower than the Spanish one; in the case of Egypt, it is estimated that a labourer in that country is also ten times cheaper than in Spain, its growers – in addition – have almost free water supply and generally enjoy much lower production costs than the Spanish ones, which are probably the highest in the world citriculture.

On the other hand, at last Friday’s interprofessional meeting, it was also agreed to call on the sector to ensure that harvesting is carried out at the optimum moment of ripening of the fruit, always taking into account the peculiarities of each variety and place of production.