Blueberries
A little bit of a stop-start to the New Zealand season, with clearance times taking much longer than usual due to flowers taking priority with Valentine’s Day this week. We expect this to improve in the coming week, but it will still mean sporadic supply. Australian supply continues out of Victoria and Tasmania, and we expect it to remain consistent in the coming week and improve after this. 

Strawberries
After some good demand last week with the first full week of school across the country, we have seen Strawberries flatline in regard to demand. Retailers at this stage are happy with the supply and demand ratio, but we are seeing fewer requirements for top-ups, indicating that demand has slowed up somewhat and supply is getting close to 100%. Increases in volume coming from Victoria are still a few weeks away, and Tasmania continues to be steady. With Strawberries being the biggest category in Berries, when the price moves to the $3.00 mark, it’s important to watch whether customers start moving into other categories, and we expect Raspberries to get shoppers who have switched. 

Raspberries and Blackberries
Whilst there is a good supply coming out of Tasmania, we will see Northern growing regions start to increase. While slow at the start, it will ramp up into March. Prices will begin to come under pressure next week as supply increases, but Victoria might move first to hold the other states up a week longer.