Raw material price seasonality: the buyer's calendar

Three profiles stand out. Summer fruits are at their most expensive from April to June, when winter imports stop and European fields still produce little: watermelon +35% in April, table grape +24% in June. They are at their cheapest in August or September. Citrus fruits do the opposite: cheapest at the end of winter, lemon -15% and orange -13% in March, most expensive in September and October, when supply passes from the southern hemisphere to Spain. Finally, four materials are at their most expensive in December or January: strawberry, anchovy, king scallop and Norway lobster.

An average is not a forecast: a year of frost or of a reduced quota can wipe it out (step 6). To follow the current year, open each material's market prices page: its index is updated there every week.

Vegetables for processing are the clearest example in France. “Every year, between November and February, producer organisations and processors negotiate the contracts for the coming season”, and “production is decided solely on the basis of the processors' orders”, as Terre-net points out. The contract sets the areas, the target yields and the purchase price according to quality criteria.

For processing tomatoes in northern Italy, the interbranch organisation's framework agreement sets a price per tonne before or during planting: €150 in 2023, agreed on 19 May, late compared with planting, €142.50 in 2025, signed in record time with contracts filed before 28 February, and €134 in 2026, signed on 27 March. This price is only indicative: quality grids and Brix premiums make the price of each delivery vary.

For frozen raspberry, the year's price is set at the Serbian harvest, at the end of June and in July. In 2025, a year of frost and heat, the price paid to Serbian growers went from about €2.60 a kilo at the end of June to €3.85 to €4.00 as a national average on 4 July (East-Fruit).

1. Find in the table the month in which the material is at its lowest: it is usually the heart of the harvest, when supply is strongest.
2. Open the season negotiation a few months before that month, with the volumes for the whole year.
3. Ask the supplier when its harvest starts and what volumes it expects: a season that starts late shifts the whole calendar.
4. Put in writing what happens if the harvest fails: reduced volumes, a price revision, another origin.

French apricot shows it every summer. In 2025, prices fell by 27% to 50% between the first quotation and the production peak, in week 28. The 45 to 50 mm size from south-eastern France went from €3.35 a kilo in week 22 to €1.94 in week 27, and apricot was officially declared in market crisis “from 3 to 18 July and from 30 to 31 July” (RNM, FranceAgriMer). In our index, apricot is 26% above its average in May and 11% below it in July.

Same pattern for melon: in 2025, the French Centre-West market was “quickly swamped by an influx of volumes” and placed in market crisis for three weeks from 23 July (DRAAF Pays de la Loire). For watermelon, in June 2018, the price paid to Spanish growers dropped by 82% in about ten days, to €0.10 to €0.12 a kilo, when the Levante, in eastern Spain, came into full production (ASAJA).

For strawberry, June combines the end of the Spanish season, open-field strawberries from France, Poland and Germany, and demand that turns to other fruit: “consumption spreads out as the first stone fruit and greenhouse melons arrive on the market” (DRAAF PACA).

Buying at the low point means being able to keep the goods: freezing, cold storage, processing into purée or jam. Count what this storage costs before you compare the July price with the May price. Frozen fruit producers themselves avoid large stocks, because the energy for refrigeration is expensive (CBI).

Europe depends on imports for its supply all year round: local harvests dominate summer and autumn, imports cover winter, from October to April. South Africa and Peru are the most common counter-season suppliers (CBI).

The handover is not seamless. The most expensive months in the table often fall at the switch from one origin to the next: April for watermelon and melon, when Brazil has finished in March, Senegal stops around 10 April (FreshPlaza) and Spain starts “with limited volumes” (FreshPlaza). Then June for table grape, September and October for lemon, orange and blueberry.

For lemon, Spain supplies Europe from the end of September to June or July (FreshPlaza). Summer depends on Argentina and South Africa, whose season runs until September (FreshPlaza). Even at origin, summer lemons cost more: in the 2025-2026 Spanish season, spring and summer Verna fetched €0.90 to €1.00 a kilo, against €0.45 to €0.55 for winter Fino.

For orange, South Africa leaves the European market around mid-October (FreshPlaza), while Spanish Navelinas only reach northern Europe in November (FreshPlaza). Our index puts orange 17% above its average in September and October.

Apples keep: in conventional cold storage, they sell until March on average, in controlled atmosphere until June (FreshPlaza). European stocks go from more than 4.2 million tonnes on 1 December 2024 (WAPA, via FreshPlaza) to about 340,000 t on 1 July 2025. In our index, apple's most expensive month is August, at +7%, when stocks from the old crop are at their lowest and the new one has not yet arrived (FreshPlaza).

For fish, the European Union produces only about 5% of the cod it consumes, and its imports from Russia and China are mostly frozen. For hake, it covers 39% of its needs (EUMOFA). At French fish auctions, hake nonetheless stays seasonal: about €2.50 to €3.50 a kilo from February to April 2024, €5 to €6 from September to December (FranceAgriMer). Our index, which also tracks frozen and imported fish, moves by 3% at most.

Fresh sardine sells for about €0.80 to €0.95 a kilo at first sale all year round in France, and canneries run all year on frozen and imported fish (Ifremer). Mussels show the same effect: purchases roughly triple in summer, but the retail price stays between €3.90 and €5.00 a kilo. France imports more mussels than it produces: 76,592 t against 54,826 t in 2023 (FranceAgriMer).

Farmed salmon has its own season, that of the fish's growth: it grows faster in summer and autumn, and most of the harvest takes place in the second half of the year (Mowi). Our index puts it 9% below its average in October and 9% above in April. According to Norwegian export statistics, the low point comes a month earlier, in September (SSB).