Persistent heavy rain in Brazil has seen table grape exports from the San Francisco River Valley suffer a serious reduction, with up to 80% of volumes affected since the start of the year. Producers have instead had to turn to the local market to prevent losses. Renato Alves, commercial director from the table grape producers' cooperative COANA, says: "A major challenge, like for everyone else, has been the weather. This year, we have experienced heavy rains so far, which have made exporting in this first semester unfeasible and may partially compromise the main harvest of the second semester. However, it is too early to have any certainty about this."

He says it is disappointing to be affected by the heavy rain and not supply their export markets like in the past few years. "Over the past three years, we have witnessed a strong increase in demand in our domestic market and the USA market, with a stagnation in the UK. The opening of the French and Spanish markets for Brazilian grapes in continental Europe has been a positive development for us," states Matsumoto.

Coana as a co-operative has approximately 400 hectares of grapes in production, mainly geared towards export. The farms are located in the municipalities of Petrolina (PE) and Curaçá (BA) in the North East of Brazil. They currently have 13 varieties planted across the farms. This includes a mix of the latest white, red and green seedless grapes from most of the major breeders. They export to more than 10 countries around the world. 

"In 2023 we produced 13,500 tons of grapes with 651 containers exported. We are the second-largest grape exporter from Brazil. We export 67% of our volume, with 33% going to the domestic market. Our exports are divided into South America 34%, USA that receives 25%, Europe with 23% and the UK with 18%. Coana thinks there is still space for growth, we will expand in the next five years in both the internal and export markets, to reach 20,000 tons," explains Alves.

He says despite the reliable export markets, the local Brazilian market remains huge, with a population of over 215 million. It is in times like these, when the rain hits hard, when the local market shows its value. "We provide the domestic market with 6,000 tons a year, that is distributed to only eight states. It is still the single biggest market for Coana. We invest in branding, market segmentation and in trade marketing," concludes Alves.

Source - https://www.freshplaza.com