MADRID: Spain has no real match in the melon market, since almost 90 percent of its sales are made in the European Union (EU), where it holds a dominant position, according to a global analysis of melon trade in 2014, made with data from the Statistics Division of the United Nations (UN) and the statistical service Euroestacom (ICEX-Eurostat).
Of the five largest melon exporters, which ranked by export volume are Guatemala, Spain, Honduras, the United States and Brazil, only the latter competes with Spain, although with much smaller volumes.
Total world exports of melon in 2014 amounted to 2,332.61 million kilos. With a combined total of 1,069.17 million kilos, the three largest exporters are Guatemala, Honduras and Spain, which together account for 45.83 percent of the world’s total exports made that year.
Guatemala, which tops the ranking, does not compete with Spain, since 90 percent of its exports go to the United States. Honduras, which ranks third, also allocates 83 percent of its exports to the U.S. market. Thus, the shipments of the world’s leading exporters of this summer fruit do not overlap with Spain’s production.
In Spain, the most noteworthy region in terms of volume was Murcia, with exports amounting to a total of 209.81 million kilos in 2014; this is 51.92 percent of the country’s exports and 8.99 percent of the world’s total, which means Murcia would be in third place in the ranking of the world’s largest melon exporters, behind Guatemala and Honduras and ahead of the rest of Spain, the United States and Brazil.
Guatemala
Guatemalan melon exports during 2014 reached 419.15 million kilos; 17.97 percent of the world’s total. The fruit was mainly shipped to the United States, which was the final destination for 90 percent of its sales abroad.
Spain
Spanish melon exports during the year under review amounted to 404.08 million kilos, which is 17.32 percent of the world’s total shipments in 2014.
Spain’s main customers were France, which accounted for 27 percent of the total purchases, Germany, with 22.4 percent, and the Netherlands, which received 13 percent of all Spanish melon exports.
As pointed out above, the region of Murcia, with 209.81 million kilos of melons exported in 2014, accounts for 51.92 percent of all Spanish exports.
Completing the ranking of the top five largest exporters in Spain we find the provinces of Almeria, with 73.38 million kilos, Valencia, with 38.38 million kilos, Alicante, with 23.2 million kilos and Ciudad Real, which exported a total of 16.5 million kilos of melons in 2014.
Honduras
Honduran melon exports in 2014 reached a volume of 245.94 million kilos, which is 10.54 percent of the world’s total exports. These shipments were intended almost exclusively for the U.S. market.
The European market
In 2014, the European Union bought a total of 952.42 million kilos of melons. The leading European supplier was Spain, with 352.04 million kilos. Of that total, Murcia supplied 204.8 million kilos, which means that this Spanish province was the leading European melon supplier.
The EU’s second largest melon supplier was Brazil, with 179.39 million kilos, followed by the Netherlands (117.19 million kilos), Costa Rica (57.32 million kilos) and Morocco, which sold a total of 47.18 million kilos of melon to the European Union. This figure represents 95.54 percent of the country’s total exports, which amounted to 49.38 million kilos.
