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Hazelnuts: small quantities will drive prices high

August 18, 2017 at 9:49 AM , Starry Night Ltd.
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Harvest is to begin soon. Prices will command a premium, as always.

Hazelnuts: harvest to start within several days

SOFIA. Local farmers will start collecting the crop in the following days and depending on the region of the country, they will end in about a two-months’ time - sometime in the middle of October. Harvesting the crop last year, farmers had to face adverse weather conditions – heavy and prolonged rains – and as a result, many of them finally collected the crop in the beginning of November.

Small quantities drive prices high

The cultivation of hazelnuts has never been so widely popular as that of walnuts. A case in point, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, during harvest 2015-16, the country’s output of in shell hazelnuts reached 316 mt. According to local farmers, during the disastrous 2016-17, good quality in shell crop -- conventional and organic -- could have reached at most 70 mt. As a result, the crop remains an exclusive offering on the local market and has always been worthy of its premium. Indeed, organic kernels could easily reach 12 EUR/kg EXW Bulgaria.

Therefore, local farmers do not feel compelled to lower prices since by New Year’s Eve, the majority of their production is sold out. Since every year, domestic demand is much higher than local supply, the gap between local supply and local demand has been always filled in by imports - usually from Turkey.

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