The Global Berry Congress took place in Rotterdam earlier this week, with good international turnout and high quality speakers.
The day's program featured speakers who spoke about re-shaping the future of the berry offer and opportunities in the different markets around the world.
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China has long been seen as the Holy Grail for premium fresh produce and the is indeed ripe high quality berries, especially blueberries which the Chinese see as extremely healthy, but also big sweet and tasty.
Eastern Europe was also on the agenda. The region continues to increase production and can produce when central European has limited production, but some countries are in need of serious investment to reach their full potential.
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Morocco has also seen a huge increase in blueberry production in recent years and is concentrating on the early varieties which come into production before the main European producers have fruit.
Brexit
Of course Brexit was a popular topic of conversation, would the Brits have to wait in the long, slow non-EU line on the way home or not? But more seriously UK companies have been making plans for a while to ensure they can continue to trade if the UK crashes out of Europe. It is not just trade deals, tariffs and delays they have to think about. One company has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds setting up a European company to keep doing business, all of the product registrations they have in the the UK will not be recognized if the UK leaves Europe so it was imperative to have the company registered in a European country.
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