Month by month
Spanish oranges in July, and what fills the gap
There are none of ours, and on the Spanish calendar very little of anyone's. July is the first full month of the year in which the weekly series we publish carries no cultivar at all, only a national average. What reaches European shelves this month is largely imported, and Eurostat puts South Africa and Egypt together above two thirds of that trade.
The figures
| Month | July |
|---|---|
| On the tree in this area | Nothing of ours is picked this month |
| Varieties in window | 0 |
| Weekly market observations we hold | ISO weeks 28 to 31, every one of them the national average alone |
| Extra-EU orange imports by origin | South Africa 43 per cent and Egypt 27 per cent, Eurostat, reference year 2017 |
| Valencian citrus exports in July | 61,506 t in the 2023/24 campaign, against 390,548 t in that December |
What it changes on an order
Your shelf listing runs through the summer
The fruit filling it comes from outside the Union, and a specification written around winter Spanish navel travels badly to it. Size habits, transit times and the arrival condition you should expect are all different, and they belong in a fresh specification rather than in a substitution note.
You have been offered Spanish fruit this month
Ask when it was cut and where it has been since. The Spanish harvest calendar has next to nothing to cut in July, so the honest answer involves a cold store, and the length of that stay is the thing worth knowing.
You are reviewing what last season cost
One campaign is fully closed and the next one has not been forecast yet, which makes this the cleanest fortnight of the year for that arithmetic. Nobody is selling you anything in July and nobody is defending a price.
What this note does not settle
- The Eurostat breakdown is annual and covers all orange imports from outside the Union. It does not say which origin fills a particular July week, and its reference year is some way back.
- We grow nothing that reaches this month. This page is not an offer, not a substitute and not an introduction to another supplier.
- The export series counts every citrus leaving the Comunitat Valenciana, including stored fruit and fruit that is not orange at all.
Source: Eurostat, EU production and trade in oranges, Conselleria de Agricultura, Previsión de la cosecha de cítricos 2025/2026, European Commission, citrus fruit statistics
What a European shelf is actually holding
The orange in a European display this month did not grow anywhere near here. Eurostat's breakdown of orange imports from outside the Union puts South Africa first by a wide margin and Egypt second, and between them they take more than two thirds of that trade. The picture is annual rather than monthly, and it is the closest a public source comes to answering the question.
The consequence for a buyer is that summer runs on a different supply chain rather than a thinner version of the winter one. Transit is longer, the arrival protocol is not the same, and what counts as acceptable firmness on the dock shifts with it. A specification drafted around Valencian navel in January is being asked to do work nobody wrote it for.
The month with nothing to defend
One campaign has closed and the next has not been forecast, so this is the only stretch of the year when nobody in Spanish citrus is trying to sell anything. It makes an excellent month for awkward questions, and that includes awkward questions put to us.
The ones worth asking are the ones that get deflected in season. What really happened in the weeks that went wrong last year. Which sizes were promised and which turned up. Whether a grower has ever supplied the volume you are about to ask for. Nobody loses a sale by answering them in July, which is precisely why they come back straighter.
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.