22 February 2024 , 09:26
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UK households have been warned that the price of a popular breakfast item could skyrocket due to 'disease'.
The cost of oranges used for juicing might go up because hot weather in southern Europe and disease in Brazil could mean there aren't enough to meet demand.
Farmers in Brazil, who grow the most citrus fruit in the world, are currently fighting greening disease, says Harry Campbell, a fruit expert at Mintec. This has made them pick their fruit "untypically early" to avoid losing it, which means there's less orange juice available.
Andrew Gibb, managing director of Coldpress Juices, said the price increases over the past few months have been "unprecedented", with costs doubling from 2022 to 2024. The company "had no option but to pass on relatively modest 11 per cent to 15 per cent price increases with most customers" this year, Gibb said.
"We are hoping for a return to 'normalish' levels in Spain for early 2025," Gibb said. Raw Mockingbird Press co-founder Chris Laidlaw also said the business had seen a "steep rise" in orange juice prices "like the rest of the market". "While often this doesn't result in best global pricing at time like this with instability, we are able to secure supply", Laidlaw said.
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Mr Laidlaw explained to Birmingham Live that the biggest challenge is being "extra reliant on quality as without the heat pasteurisation to dull the flavour there is no room for deviation in product quality as the fruit tastes as it does from the branch to the bottle using the cold-press process".
British Soft Drinks Association director general Gavin Partington said: "Producers are trying to find efficiencies to help absorb and avoid passing significant price rises onto consumers but inevitably there has been some inflation on the product due to the chronic difficulties around obtaining oranges for juicing."
He also added: "It should be noted that most other juice products are not seeing the same shortages of their constituent fruit."