Aug 31, 2018

Frozen blueberry storage down compared to 2017, 2016

July’s cold storage of blueberries is down compared to the last two years, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC) recently reported.

“At the end of July 175.3 million lbs. of blueberries were reported in cold storage compared to 197.7 million at the end of June in 2017,” the council wrote in its August U.S. cold storage update. “The comparable 2016 figure was 260.7 million pounds. In 2015it was 236.4 million pounds. In 2014 it was 171.7 million pounds.

“Some of the dynamics of the 2018 crop season as far as frozen inventories go are now becoming more defined. We’re certainly not going to be matching the peak inventory years of 2016 and 2017 and will likely be below or very close to the 2017 figures. August/September are the normal peak inventory figures, so we’ll see how they play out with some Northwest and Midwest processed number still to be accounted for. Again, there’s no indication of any major changes to the trends we’ve seen over the last few months as far as what’s going into inventory. Demand, or what’s coming out of inventory, is more difficult to interpret and we’ll need to wait to get a better handle on that going into the end of the year when there’s nothing going into cold storage.”