Banana season by country

Every week of the year. Bananas are harvested and shipped against standing programmes rather than in a season, and the lane out of Guayaquil never closes.

Volume and price firm through the Northern Hemisphere winter and soften through its summer, but there is no month when the fruit stops. The risk on a banana programme is two consecutive arrivals colliding in the same week, not a window closing.

Every week of the year, out of Urabá and the Magdalena region through Turbo, Santa Marta and Cartagena. Colombia has shipped bananas on standing programmes for a century and the lane never closes.

The Caribbean ports are the shortest hop from South America to both Rotterdam and the US East Coast, which is Colombia’s structural advantage on a product where the fruit itself is indistinguishable between origins.

Year-round out of Moín, on standing programmes. Costa Rica has among the most consistent banana quality of any origin and prices accordingly.

Moín’s rebuilt terminal is the reason this works at the volume it does — it is the one part of the Central American Caribbean coast with the depth and the crane capacity for the ships the trade now uses.

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.

Year-round out of Puerto Cortés, on standing programmes. Honduras is where the modern banana trade was invented and the Sula valley still ships every week.

Puerto Cortés is the whole logistical story here: one port, deep water, good connections, and close enough to the US Gulf that discharge happens in days. A single-port origin is also a concentration risk — when the port has a problem, the country has a problem.

Every week of the year, out of Mindanao and shipping through Davao and General Santos. This is the largest banana programme in Asia and it is a different trade from the Latin American one on the rest of this page: the buyers are in Japan, Korea, China and Hong Kong, and the voyage is days rather than a fortnight.

Because the lane is short, almost nothing that decides the outcome happens at sea. Japanese volume in particular is committed on annual agreements, so the price was set long before the box was loaded and what an importer is actually managing is delivery against a schedule. The two things that break that schedule are a typhoon crossing Mindanao and a terminal, in that order.

Every week of the year, and a large share of it certified organic — which is what the origin is for. The dry growing regions in Azua and the north-west make organic production practical in a way the wet Latin American lowlands do not, so a disproportionate amount of what European retail sells as organic banana comes off this island.

That changes what can go wrong. A conventional banana that arrives without its paperwork is still a banana; an organic one that arrives without its certificate is a conventional banana sold at a conventional price. On this row the documents are worth as much attention as the reefer.

Every week of the year, on a much smaller footprint than the pineapple programme beside it and almost all of it into Europe. Volume comes off a handful of large estates in the Volta region rather than off a broad grower base.

A concentrated origin is a predictable one until it isn’t. There is no second growing region to draw on here, so what would be a regional problem in Ecuador or Colombia is a national one in Ghana, and a buyer treating this as a swing supply should know how little slack sits behind it.

Every week of the year, out of the Agnéby and Comoé valleys and shipping through Abidjan into France, Spain and the Benelux. It is the larger of the two West African banana programmes and the one European retail buys from directly.

The lane is what the origin sells. Abidjan to Northern Europe sits inside the Latin American crossings, so the fruit arrives younger and can be ripened on a shorter schedule — which matters to a ripener with fixed room capacity far more than the difference in FOB price does.