Origin comparison
Spanish navel or Egyptian navel, and when
Both, and not for the same weeks. The USDA report from Cairo puts Egyptian Washington Navel ripening from November to March, with an export season that runs on cold storage into late July. Ours finishes in April. Egypt is the bigger and the longer supply by a distance, and the same report lists Spain among the countries it ships to.
Side by side
| What you are comparing | Navelina | Egyptian Washington Navel |
|---|---|---|
| Window the origin publishes | October – March | Ripening November to March; export opens 1 December and runs on cold storage to late July |
| Group, and the cultivar named | Navel group | Navel, with Washington Navel named as the key navel cultivar grown |
| Seeds in the fruit | Seedless | Seedless |
| Sizes the origin states | 3, 4, 5 | No size code published; the fruit is described as medium to large |
| What the crop is grown for | Table / Juice | Fresh export and processing |
Figures for varieties we do not grow come from: Egyptian Washington Navel: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Egypt Citrus Annual, report EG2024-0030, December 2024
Which one to order, and when
You are filling navel weeks between November and March
Either, and price will decide it
The two windows sit on top of each other and both fruits are listed seedless. Nothing in this table separates them on eating quality, because neither column carries a measured figure. What is left to choose on is volume, distance and how far back a pallet can be traced.
You need navel on the shelf after April
Egypt, or another origin
Our last navel is cut in April. The Cairo report has Egyptian orange leaving on cold storage into late July, so those weeks are theirs and not ours. That is better heard in September than asked for in May.
You have to name the ground the fruit grew on
Us
The same report lists Spain among Egypt's top ten destinations for fresh orange. A Spanish shipper is therefore not by itself a statement about where fruit was grown. Ours comes from three municipalities of one comarca and every planting behind it is published.
What this comparison does not settle
- The whole Egyptian column is one attaché report for one marketing year. It describes a national crop rather than a lot anyone can load, and its export figures cover Egyptian orange as a whole, Washington Navel and Valencia together, not navel on its own.
- No sugar, acid or juice measurement appears in either column. The Cairo report does not carry them and ours are still unmeasured on our own trees, so this page cannot tell you which fruit eats better.
- Price is missing, and price is usually why the question gets asked. This site publishes a market series for Spanish navel and has no equivalent for Egyptian fruit, so the two cannot be set on one basis here.
- The Spanish column is a regional window. Our picking dates for the coming season are not fixed, and a calendar has never been a delivery date.
Why the calendar is the wrong place to start
Put the two windows side by side and they look like one offer. Both are navel, both are listed seedless, both are cut through the European winter. A buyer who stops there decides on price, and on price this is not a close contest: the Cairo report counts a national export programme against a family holding in one comarca. If price is the whole of the question, the honest answer is that you are reading the wrong page.
What does separate them is how far back a pallet can be traced. Everything in the Egyptian column describes a country: a cultivar grown across reclaimed desert, a harvest opened by a committee, a season carried by storage. That is accurate, and it is the right grain of detail for a market report. It is the wrong grain when your own customer asks which orchard a box came from, and no report is at fault for that. They were written to answer a different question.
The months after ours belong to somebody else
Ripening and shipping are two different dates, and the Cairo report gives both. Egyptian navel ripens through to the end of winter. The export season it belongs to runs a great deal later, carried on cold storage. Fruit leaving a store in early summer was cut months before, which is a legitimate way to hold a listing and a thing worth knowing before anyone promises a customer freshly picked. The question applies to any origin shipping outside its own picking window, Spanish ones included.
Our answer to those late months is shorter than we would like. We finish, and then we stop. If a programme has to be covered from autumn through to summer, Egypt covers more of it than we do, and the sensible shape of that is a second supplier agreed in advance rather than an assurance from us that would not survive the spring. What is standing in our own trees this week is a separate page and a separate promise.
What a small origin can actually offer
There is a version of this page that lists everything wrong with imported fruit and finishes with a quotation request. It would be dishonest. Egypt grows a seedless navel that the same report describes as medium to large, sends it to well over a hundred countries, and counts Spain among the places it lands. Anyone selling Spanish fruit who leaves that out is hoping nobody looks.
What survives the honesty is narrow and still worth something. We can say which municipality a pallet came from and which planting, because there are five of them and all five are published. We are near enough to reach a European warehouse quickly by road. We cannot offer a certificate, a guaranteed volume or a price built on national scale, and none of those is a small thing to be missing. Send the weeks and the quantity, and the useful answer may well be that you need both origins.
The other decisions a buyer makes before ordering
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.