Peru avocado export season

Peru’s avocado window runs roughly April to August, opening in March and tailing off in September. It sits on the opposite side of the year from Peru’s blueberry programme, which is what keeps the corridor out of Callao busy year-round rather than seasonally idle.

Customs figures show how concentrated it is. In 2024, April to August carried 79% of Peru’s avocado exports, with June and July at 20% each; March was 10% and September 4%. The coast grows almost all of it: La Libertad, Lambayeque, Lima and Ica are 75% of Hass production, and 86% of export production is on the desert coast. The highlands of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Apurímac and Cusco are small but growing, and they pick first, from February or March. So the opening weeks are the Andean smallholders and the heart of the season is the northern coast.

Hass is 95% of exports and the only variety Peru ships to the United States. Fuerte stays mostly in the domestic market. Fruit is picked at a minimum of 22% dry matter.

Europe is the market. ProHass forecast more than 765,000 tonnes for 2026. Of that, 488,000 tonnes, or 64%, were for Europe, about 107,000 tonnes for the United States, 82,000 tonnes for Asia and 86,000 tonnes for Chile and Argentina. Most of it leaves through Callao, where DP World alone handled 60% of the country’s avocado shipments in 2025. August fruit goes mostly to Europe. The US has been open since 2010 under a systems approach rather than a treatment: registered orchards and packhouses, fruit-fly controls and inspection.

The window overlaps with Mexico’s flor loca crop at both ends, so European buyers usually have a choice in April and again in September — and no choice at all in June and July, when Peru is effectively the Northern Hemisphere summer supply.

What moves it year to year is heat and the bearing cycle. High temperatures in the second half of 2023, as El Niño set in, cut fruit sizes, and ProHass expected 16% less fruit for 2024. The 2025 crop was an “on” year, up 38%. In 2026, coastal heat was expected to end the season three to four weeks early, around mid-August, and by September ProHass expected total exports to fall almost 2%. The EU checks cadmium, too: six Peruvian shipments were rejected in 2024 for exceeding the 0.05 mg/kg limit.

On the long run to Europe the fruit travels mature-green. UC Davis puts Hass at 5–7°C for up to nine weeks in a controlled atmosphere of 2% oxygen and 3–5% carbon dioxide. Below that, chilling injury sets in after a week at 0–2°C.