EU imports of Egyptian frozen strawberries were valued at €1.15 a kilogram over January to June, up from €1.13 a year earlier, according to Eurostat figures accessed via Cropli, or about $1.34 at the period's average exchange rate.

Brazil's imports of the same product from Egypt were priced at $0.83 over those months, down from $0.99, Comex Stat customs data showed.

The gap was wider still through the second quarter, when Egypt ships most of its crop, at $1.34 against $0.76.

Volumes moved in opposite directions. EU imports from Egypt fell 17 per cent to 122,237 tonnes in the first half, while Brazil's rose 43 per cent to 37,456 tonnes in the eight months to August, more than Egypt shipped to Brazil in the whole of 2025.

July was the largest month in the Brazilian series and its cheapest July, at 7,611 tonnes, of which 7,423 tonnes came from Egypt at $0.75 a kilogram. August held at $0.78, with Egypt supplying 97 per cent of the month's imports.

Brazilian buyers have paid less than European ones for Egyptian frozen fruit in every year since 2021. The discount was 9 per cent in 2021 and 5 per cent in 2022, when Egypt supplied around half of Brazil's imports, and between 21 and 30 per cent in each of the three years since.

ONE IN FIVE CONSIGNMENTS CHECKED

Since 18 February, 20 per cent of Egyptian strawberry consignments entering the EU have been subject to mandatory identity and physical checks under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/194, after a rise in notifications for pesticide residues on the bloc's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. Egyptian exporters say the notifications concerned in particular the unauthorised insecticide oxamyl.

"With one in five consignments physically inspected, the volume of strawberries meeting EU requirements has tightened significantly," Abdallah Tharwat, chief operating officer of Egyptian frozen-strawberry exporter Egyberries, told EastFruit in February. "The market dynamic has changed, with buyers prioritizing reliability and regulatory compliance over lower prices."

The enforcement record bears that out. Egypt accounted for 16 per cent of the residue interceptions logged on the alert system for third-country fruit and vegetables last year while supplying 10 per cent of the bloc's produce imports from outside the EU, according to an analysis published by FreshPlaza this month. Only Turkey had a worse record.

Ihab Mansour, chief executive of Egyptian exporter Fresh Box, said last season's difficulty in Europe lay elsewhere. "The real story of this season was what happened on the demand side in Europe," he told FreshPlaza on 9 September. "We faced unusually prolonged domestic strawberry seasons across several key EU producing countries. The result is well known to everyone, with tough marketing for Egyptian strawberries and low prices."

The retreat from Europe was not across the board. EU imports of fresh Egyptian strawberries, a much smaller trade on a separate customs line, rose 42 per cent to 8,739 tonnes over the October-to-April season, at a steady €4.76 a kilogram.

Neither Eurostat nor Comex Stat publishes a grade split within HS 0811.10, and the two series do not show what is in the boxes.

Brazilian growers have already sought protection. The São Paulo state farm federation, Faesp, has asked the agriculture and trade ministries to consider trade protection measures, saying imported fruit was entering below domestic growing costs, FreshPlaza reported on 4 September. Faesp put imports at about 30 per cent of the Brazilian market in 2025, citing the same customs data.

PLANTINGS SEEN FALLING

Egypt's industry says the surplus is about to be cut. "We are already seeing indications that total strawberry plantations across Egypt will come down by as much as 30 per cent next season," Mansour said.

Emad Mahdy, who runs Fayruz Nurseries, said in April that the reduction "should be one-third", a prescription rather than a count, and expected it to come from new entrants leaving.

"I think many investors who recently entered the strawberry cultivation business, drawn by attractive margins, will have to leave the sector. Long-time strawberry growers, for whom this is a strategic crop, will continue," he said.

Mahdy told the same outlet on 10 September of last year that the increase in Egyptian acreage was remarkably large and that the fresh market could not absorb the overproduction, an assessment this year's volumes have borne out.

He also sells the plants, so a forecast of a one-third fall runs against his own order book. He put Egypt's area at "no less than 100,000 feddans", about 43,000 hectares. FAO recorded 23,808 hectares for 2024, and Tharwat gave EastFruit a figure of "around 9,000 hectares".

On the FAO series, a 30 per cent cut would not create scarcity. Egypt's harvested area rose two and a half times between 2016 and 2024, to 23,808 hectares and a crop of 880,847 tonnes. Several exporters put the 2025/26 expansion at a further 30 per cent, according to Moroccan trade site AgriMaroc. Removing 30 per cent from that peak would return the country to roughly its 2023 and 2024 acreage, the base that doubled Brazil's imports in the first place.

Weather is not forcing the cut either. Peak daily maximum temperatures over the 1 August to 14 September planting window were the second-lowest of the past six years at all four of Cropli's monitoring points in Qalyubia, Beheira, Ismailia and Sharqia, the governorates where Egypt's strawberry growing is concentrated, ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli showed. Three of the four recorded no day at or above 42°C.

The same window in 2025 brought six days at or above 42°C at the Qalyubia point and a peak of 44.7°C. Mansour blames that window for last season's seedling failures.

Morocco, the origin most often named as the beneficiary, is further down the same road. Its harvested area more than halved to 1,569 hectares in 2024, on FAO figures. A 30 per cent cut in Egypt would remove about 7,100 hectares, four and a half times Morocco's entire remaining area.

EU imports of Moroccan fresh strawberries fell 57 per cent to 3,366 tonnes over the same October-to-April season. What survives is frozen, at about 24,000 tonnes into the EU in the first half and a 42 per cent premium to Egyptian fruit.

In Greece, around 50 hectares of new strawberry area have been added across Ilia and Achaia in the west of the country for the season starting this month, Antonis Arvanitakis of Arvanitakis Fruits told FreshPlaza on 7 September, driven by large producers on contract-farming agreements who want supply of their own rather than buying it in.

Around 20 Egyptian companies are in Moscow this week for WorldFood, where Egypt already ranks first among suppliers of frozen strawberries to Russia, a trade that appears in neither customs series.