Blueberry consumption in Europe and Spain will multiply by 4 in the coming years

The experts affirm that the consumption of blueberries begins to emerge in Europe, and Spain, a region of the planet in which this red fruit is still little consumed compared to other consuming areas such as the United States or Canada where the level is more than a kilo of demand per person and year.

The commercial analysis of blueberry has been the conference that opened the V Technical Conference on Cranberry cultivation in the province of Huelva, organized by the Huelva Delegation of the Official College of Agricultural Technical Engineers of Western Andalusia, Coitand. This conference, as on previous occasions, is held on the Rábida campus of the University of Huelva.

The inauguration was attended by the mayor of Palos de la Frontera, Carmelo Romero, who highlighted the healthy qualities of this fruit and underlined the importance and weight it has for the local economy of this municipality, which is well known for being one of the great producers in the province of Huelva. Along with Carmelo Romero have been the delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Junta de Andalucía in Huelva, Alvaro Burgos, who has pointed out the importance of blueberry for agriculture in the province and has made a brief summary of the occupation of this product that already reaches 30% of the production of the red fruits of Huelva.

The director of the Faculty of Experimental Sciences of the University of Huelva, Jacinto Mata, and the president of Coitand in Huelva, Julio Volante, also participated in the opening table.

The first speaker of the day was Juan Antonio Lorenzo, from the firm Fall Creek, breeder and producer of blueberry.

Lorenzo explained that market studies indicate that in the coming years the consumption of blueberries in Europe and in Spain will go from 0.180 kilos per person and current year to almost one kilo, specifically it is estimated that it can reach 0.860 kilos per inhabitant and year. An exponential increase that will place blueberry in one of the products with the most growth prospects among red fruits. Although this figure is still far from the consumption of other areas of the world such as the United States and Canada that demand more than a kilo of blueberry per person per year, about 1.15 kilos.

And the producers of Huelva are well positioned in this prospect of increasing market, since they currently produce a quarter of the blueberries consumed in Europe.

For Juan Antonio Lorenzo, the quality and homogenization of the product are the keys to make this demand real and to encourage consumption. “The consumer has to buy a product that will always be the same, in qualities and characteristics,” he noted. And as an example he has put the consumption of snaks or snacks such as fried potatoes, chocolates or so-called sweets that offer a very stable product. These, he pointed out, are the competitor of blueberries, an ideal fruit or product to eat between meals with adequate and suitable packaging. That is, it should become a mid-morning snack or snack for children, youth and adults.

One of the strongest points of the blueberry to achieve commercial growth are its healthy qualities.

On the international scene, producers in Huelva continue to face excessive concentration of production in a short period of time.

The lawyer Daniel Romero Suárez, who has spoken about good professional advisory practices, has also intervened. Romero has presented in a didactic way the problems that professionals in the agricultural sector may face and has revealed the best way to proceed and be forewarned in the event of any eventuality.