Morocco provides 50% of Spain’s tomato needs

During the year 2021, exports of tomatoes from Morocco to Spain increased by 7.59% over the previous year, or 80.79 million kilos. Morocco becomes the first supplier of tomatoes to Spain, with a rate of 45.34% of the total supply of tomatoes to the Iberian country, against a total of 83.2 million euros and an average price of 1.03 euros per kilogram, we learn from the Spanish specialized media Hortoinfo.

Morocco achieves this balance, yet it had announced on the eve of Ramadan last year that it had restricted its exports of tomatoes to Europe and sub-Saharan countries to counter the rising prices of this fruit on its domestic market. Morocco’s competitors on the Spanish market are Portugal, which occupies second place with 57,180 tons supplied to its neighbor in the same year, which corresponds to a total value of 31.75 million euros at an average price of 0.55 euros per kilo, the Netherlands, in third place with 20,510 tons, followed by Belgium (10,350 tons) and France (7,160 tons), said the same source. 


Morocco had supplied, between August 1, 2019 and July 31, 2020, 80,280 tons of tomatoes to Spain, out of a total of 200,650 tons imported by this country, with a market share of 40%, according to Icex-Tax Agency. Generally in 2021, 67% of fresh tomato imports to the European Union (EU) came from Morocco, followed by Turkey. For the European Union, in 2020, Morocco exported a total of 258.38 million kilos of tomatoes against a value of 315.98 million euros, which corresponds to a price of 1.22 euros per kilo, according to data collected in the statistical service Euroestacom (ICEX-Eurostat), by Hortoinfo 


A report by the European Commission (EC), on a quarterly basis, points out that besides the decline in production and consumption, there is also a decline in EU exports of fresh tomatoes, due to the Brexit and the gradual loss of the UK market, which in 2021 accounted for 75% of EU exports of tomatoes, and this loss of market is due, as the EC itself recognizes, “to the increase in competition from Morocco.”


During the last decade, the Kingdom has increased its exports of tomatoes, from 443.81 million kilos that it sold to other countries in 2012 to 629.51 million kilos in 2021, according to data that Hortoinfo collected from the United Nations Statistics Division (UN).