Despite the invasion of the Russian occupation troops, the damage to part of the plantations in the central and northern regions of the country, Ukrainian growers increased blueberry exports in 2022 to a record high!
The total export of fresh blueberries from Ukraine in 2022 exceeded 2 500 tonnes, an increase of 1.5 times compared to 2021. The previous record for blueberry exports from Ukraine, reached in 2019, was exceeded by 11%. And this is even though there were no exports of blueberries in 2022 from Ukraine to Belarus, which was one of the main markets for Ukrainian blueberries until 2022.
Poland has traditionally been the main market for blueberries from Ukraine. In 2022, Poland imported 2.2 times more blueberries from Ukraine than in 2021, and the export volume reached 1 350 tonnes per season. Thus, more than 50% of all Ukrainian blueberries were sent to Poland. At the same time, Poland was only a transit point for blueberries from Ukraine to other EU countries, because the export of fresh blueberries from Poland many times exceeds the volume of blueberry exports from Ukraine.
Other major importers of blueberries from Ukraine – the Netherlands, the UK, and Moldova – also sharply increased their import volumes: by 80%, 68%, and 2.4 times, respectively. For the first time, wholesale batches of blueberries from Ukraine also went to Spain, Germany, Georgia, and Finland. However, to countries where blueberries were previously delivered by planes – the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Singapore, they were not exported due to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.