According to EastFruit analysts, at the end of calendar year 2023, Ukraine will definitely remain among the top 10 suppliers of fresh blueberries to the UK market. Remembering that according to EastFruit, Great Britain is the leader in Europe in terms of blueberry consumption, both overall and per capita, by a wide margin from the rest.

Overall, Ukraine delivered 390 tons of fresh blueberries to Britain, 11% more than the previous year. This country has become the fifth sales market for Ukrainian exporters, after Poland, the Netherlands, Georgia and Germany.

“Great Britain is not yet a priority market for blueberries for Ukrainian suppliers, because deliveries to this country require significant volumes and regularity of deliveries over the maximum period of time. To enter this market, Ukrainian producers and exporters need to consolidate their efforts, unify varieties, cultivation standards, processing and packaging.

Furthermore, accessing this market requires spending significant additional resources on additional certifications, which also makes sense only in the case of significant business volumes. However, the advantages in this market are significant: prices for blueberries delivered to Great Britain are usually higher than in other sales markets. Therefore, in the coming years, Great Britain will inevitably become an increasingly important market for Ukrainian blueberry exporters, as I expect an increase in production and export volumes,” he says. Andriy Yarmak, economist in the investment division, department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The largest supplier of blueberries to the UK in the first 10 months of 2023 was Morocco. However, at the end of the year, Peru will most likely regain the first position in the ranking, despite the decrease in the volume of blueberry production and its export. Spain and Poland are also among the top five suppliers. It should be noted that it is possible that a part of the blueberries supplied to Great Britain from Poland are Ukrainian blueberries, since in 2023 about 1,1 thousand tons of fresh blueberries from Ukraine were exported to Poland.