Brazil fresh produce export calendar

Roughly August to December out of the São Francisco valley, shipping through Pecém and Natal, with fruit available for much of the rest of the year at lower volume. Irrigation and pruning set this harvest rather than the season does, which is why the window looks nothing like Peru’s despite the two countries sharing a hemisphere.

Brazil’s advantage on mango is distance. The north-eastern ports are the closest South American loading points to Europe, and a shorter voyage on fruit that ripens in transit is worth more than it sounds.

Roughly September to March out of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, aimed squarely at the European winter. Brazil is the melon origin for Europe in those months and there is not really a second one.

The whole programme depends on the short northern voyage. Melons bruise, respire fast and land with days rather than weeks in hand — the same fruit shipped from a Pacific-coast origin would not arrive saleable, which is why nobody tries.

Two harvests a year, roughly April to June and October to December, because vines in the irrigated São Francisco valley are pruned to a schedule rather than a season. That is the one thing worth knowing about Brazilian grapes: they arrive in months no other Southern Hemisphere origin can supply.

The autumn window in particular lands between the end of the Northern Hemisphere crop and the start of the Chilean and Peruvian ones, which is a gap with very little competition in it.

Year-round out of Espírito Santo and Bahia. Papaya is harvested continuously and shipped against programmes, so there is no window to plan around.

What there is instead is a very narrow transit tolerance. Papaya is picked at colour break and ripens on the way, so a slow voyage overshoots and a cold setpoint stops it dead. The short run from Brazil’s north-eastern ports is what makes a sea programme possible at all.

Year-round from São Paulo state, with the export peak from about August to November — the months when Mexican supply thins and the price is worth the longer voyage to Europe.

Brazil is the origin European buyers turn to when the Mexican market spikes, so this window is really a commercial one rather than an agricultural one. The trees produce all year; the shipping follows the price.

Roughly March to July out of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, shipping through Santos — a conventional Southern Hemisphere pome fruit window, and agriculturally a different country from the north-eastern mango and melon regions.

Brazilian apple volume is modest next to Chile’s and South Africa’s, and much of it stays in South America. What reaches Europe does so from storage, on the seller’s timing rather than the harvest’s.