While the consumption of raspberries Morocco knows an unprecedented craze, Morocco continues to increase its presence on this market. According to the specialized platform EastFruit, the kingdom has entered the top 3 countries with the most exports of the small fruit.
Thus, during the calendar year 2022, exports of frozen raspberries from Morocco have doubled in volume and reached a record of 16.7 thousand tons. As a reminder, in 2020, exports of frozen raspberries from Morocco did not exceed 3,600 tons. That is, in two years, Moroccan producers have been able to increase their exports by 4.6 times, or 13,000 tons. In terms of value, Morocco’s frozen raspberry exports increased 2.7 times during the year to $60 million.
Thus, Morocco, which was not a major player in the frozen raspberry market a few years ago, is rapidly approaching Ukraine, which ranks third in the world after Serbia and Poland, in terms of export volume of these berries.
“Morocco is a unique example of a development model for the export of berry crops. Initially, taking advantage of climatic benefits, the country focused on exporting high value-added products. Let me remind you that in the fruit and vegetable sector, value is added by selling high-quality fresh produce, not by processing it – as a rule, much cheaper produce is sent for processing. However, with the expansion of the production of fresh raspberries and other berries for export mainly to EU countries in fresh form, an opportunity for the development of berry freezing has arisen. Today, these two segments are developing dynamically and quite harmoniously, complementing each other,” commented Andriy Yarmak, economist in the Investment Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for EastFruit.
