A Capespan representative says while white grapes' U.K. market share has seen no growth in recent years, the red category continues to soar in popularity.

Capespan UK grapes procurement manager John Hopkins

Speaking at last week's London Produce Show, Capespan UK grapes procurement manager John Hopkins said sales of red grapes were now more than double those of white grapes.

"There's been a huge increase in the purchase of red grapes in particular, and black grapes. We’re seeing about 2-2.5:1 ratio between red and white," he told www.freshfruitportal.com.

"So there's huge growth on red and a stagnation on white. It’s not that white is selling much less, but that red is selling much more."

Hopkins said the change had been 'coming for a few years', but was being strongly felt over the last few months as the popularity of new varieties grew.

"There's been a lot of replacement for the Flame variety...and they are all adding to the fruit basket within the category," he said.

"It’s exciting times if you’re into buying, selling and eating grapes."

The representative said there were huge numbers of new varieties being bred nowadays, and that some looked very promising.

"We very much believe that Jack's Salute and Sweet Celebration in the red category very strong," he said.

"Sable grapes in black seedless are revered in the U.K., everybody wants Sable. For growers it’s not so great because it’s a difficult beast to actually grow and it’s quite low yielding, but it’s got an amazing flavor."

He added that in the white category, the Timpson variety had 'really taken over.'

Capespan sources grapes from a wide varieties of countries for import into the U.K., including Namibia, South Africa, Chile, India, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Peru and Brazil.

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