Avocado season by country

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.

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.

Roughly September to January, the Southern Hemisphere’s answer to the Peruvian window five months earlier. Chilean volume is smaller than Peru’s and a significant share stays in the Americas.

For a European buyer this is the shoulder of the avocado year rather than its centre — useful when Mexico is expensive and Peru has finished, and rarely the cheapest option on its own.

Effectively year-round. The main Michoacán crop peaks from about October to March, and the flor loca — the off-bloom crop — carries the middle of the year at lower volume.

Mexico is the reason there is no global avocado season. It also means that when Peru’s window opens in April, European buyers are choosing between origins on price rather than on availability, which is not true of most produce on this page.

Two harvests a year: the main crop from about September to January, and the traviesa from April to July. Between them Colombia is close to a year-round avocado origin on its own, which outside Mexico is rare.

This is the fastest-scaling avocado programme in the world and it lands in exactly the months Peru used to have to itself. If you have bought Peruvian Hass in June for years, this is the window where you now have an alternative — and so does everyone bidding against you.

Roughly March to September out of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, sitting almost exactly on top of the Peruvian window.

That overlap is the useful fact. South Africa reaches Europe in roughly two thirds of the transit Peru needs, so in the months both are shipping the choice is between a cheaper origin and a fresher one — which is a genuine commercial decision rather than a default.

Roughly October to April out of the Gharb and Loukkos regions, in the months when Peru has finished and Chile is winding down.

Moroccan avocado is small next to the Latin American origins but it is growing quickly, and it has the one advantage none of them can match: fruit on a European shelf within days of picking rather than weeks. On a product sold at a specific ripeness, that is worth a premium.

Roughly October to April out of Málaga and Granada — small volume, high price, and the shortest supply chain into Europe of any avocado on this page.

Spanish Hass is not a substitute for a Latin American programme; it is a premium sitting on top of one. What it does to the calendar is thicken the European winter, which is already the best-supplied part of the avocado year.

Roughly August to February, peaking in the Southern Hemisphere spring. Volume is small next to the Latin American origins and most of it goes to Australia and East Asia, where the shorter lane is what makes it work.

It is a biennial crop, alternating heavier and lighter years, so a New Zealand avocado programme is worth confirming against the actual harvest rather than against last year’s volume.

Roughly March to October, with Fuerte opening the season and Hass carrying the volume from about April. It sits squarely on Peru’s window rather than in a gap, which is the commercial fact to plan around: a European buyer in June has a genuine choice of origin, and Kenya is usually the cheaper half of it.

The Kenyan quality risk is at the start of the season rather than at the end. Volume comes from tens of thousands of smallholdings, and fruit picked before it has enough dry matter never ripens properly — it shrivels instead. Kenya sets a harvest opening date each season for exactly that reason, and a container loaded ahead of it is a claim rather than a head start. Everything after that is a controlled-atmosphere problem: Mombasa to Rotterdam is the better part of a month.

Roughly August to March, peaking through the Northern Hemisphere autumn and winter. This is not Hass. The Dominican crop is green-skin — Semil 34 and Carla — larger, lower in oil, and sold mainly into the US East Coast rather than into European retail.

So read this row alongside the Hass origins rather than as one of them. It is a different fruit at a different price into a different market, and the reason it works at all is distance: Caucedo is under a week from the US East Coast, which is short enough for a fruit nobody is holding in controlled atmosphere.