A Chilean fruit shipper has seen a slight uptick in fruit movement in the Chinese market after a period of sluggish cherry sales with prices that have fallen short of last year.

Frutisima general manager Jose Luis Marty told www.freshfruitportal.com the early airfreight part of the cherry campaign was strong, albeit with lower prices year-on-year, but the market slowed after seafreight arrivals came on the scene.

"A big change happened on Christmas Eve when the price fell by CNY100 (US$15.98) to CNY50 (US$7.99) per 5kg box," Marty said.

"That was the day when the season got complicated. There was high quality fruit but not much movement."

He said that large differences in prices were seen after Christmas, sometimes with as much as a US$10 difference between boxes in good quality compared to those with fruit in poor condition.

"This year the problem is that the Chinese New Year is for Feb. 18. It's further away than ever before, and you might think that’s good because you have more weeks to sell.

"Sure, but even though there have been more weeks to sell, it's been at a low price.

"Right now we are getting close to what should be the week when things start to rebound, which is traditionally three weeks out from Chinese New Year."

He said initial signs of a potential rebound were seen yesterday after a slow market over the weekend.

"We hope this pace continues, and that the hopefully the price rises. Demand will rise before Chinese New Year, but this year there’s a lot more supply.

"This year there’s some 80% more Chilean fruit in China in total, so the big question is how much effect will that have? Will the increase in demand be sufficient to cope with such a large offering."

He said the rebound would likely be significant for good quality fruit, but conditions would still be very challenging for cherries of inferior quality.

"A lot of people have seen how the market is and saved their fruit, but there is also fruit in a condition that the market will not be able to support due to the rains that happened in Chile."

Marty added that while there was a range of fruits on offer in the Chinese market, visits to supermarkets and wet markets showed that cherries were the indisputable "queen of fruits".

"After cherries it would be grapes. At the moment there are a lot of grapes from Peru.

"However, the big competitors with Chilean cherries are Chilean cherries themselves, because of the large volume that's there."

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