Guatemala fresh produce export calendar

Year-round, from both coasts. Guatemala is one of the largest banana exporters in the world and the volume splits between Puerto Quetzal on the Pacific and Santo Tomás and Puerto Barrios on the Caribbean.

Which coast a booking loads from decides the voyage, and on a year-round programme that is the only variable that really moves. A Pacific booking for a European buyer is a longer transit for no reason.

Roughly March to June, running just ahead of and alongside the Mexican window. Guatemala is the smaller of the two and is often the origin that opens the Northern Hemisphere season.

Volume is modest enough that a Guatemalan mango programme is usually a supplement to a Mexican one rather than a replacement for it — useful in the weeks at the start of the season when Mexican fruit is not yet in full flow.

Roughly December to April out of the Pacific lowlands, on the same counter-season logic as the Costa Rican and Honduran crops.

Central American melon is a three-country programme that behaves as one market. When one origin has a weather event, the price moves for all three — which is worth knowing before treating a single-origin contract as a hedge.

Roughly November to April out of the highlands around Chimaltenango and Sololá, grown for the months when no temperate producer has them.

This is the most perishable thing on this whole calendar. Snow peas lose quality within days of picking, and most of the trade flies. What goes by sea goes on a short lane, at a carefully held temperature, with a buyer who has done the arithmetic — and a rolled sailing does not delay the shipment so much as end it.

Year-round, alongside the banana programme and usually in the same booking.

Guatemalan plantain goes overwhelmingly to the United States. For a European buyer it is rarely the first choice of origin, but it is the one that fills in when Colombian or Ecuadorian supply is committed.