Why raspberries grown in Britain cost you 10p each!
(But tiny Spanish ones are only 3p per fruit)
THEY may taste sweeter and have the bonus of fewer air miles, but if you’re looking to indulge in some juicy British raspberries you could fork out more than you bargained for.
Shoppers are paying up to three times as much for home-grown varieties as those ripened abroad – with much of the fruit dressed up in premium branding.
Tesco is charging 10p per raspberry for its UK variants, while those from Spain cost just 3p. In three other supermarkets – Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer – British fruits are also noticeably more expensive, a daily Mail survey revealed.
Suppliers say the difference is because our raspberry season has not quite started, so any local pro-duce in stores is likely to have been grown i n state - of- the art glass houses. While this ensures it is of good quality, it also means it is being sold at high-end prices.
Sainsbury’s have only just started filling their shelves with British rasp-berries under their premium Taste The difference brand, at 8p per fruit compared with 5p for the standard range from Spain.
and the Mail’s survey found that at Tesco, the only British raspberries on sale were clad in Tesco Finest logos, priced at £2.50 for a punnet of 25. For the same cost you can buy a packet of 80 Spanish raspberries.
However the quality of Spanish raspberries is measly by comparison. despite apparently offering better value for money, they have shrunk in size as the country’s growing season draws to a close.
Laurence Olins, chairman of British Summer Fruits, which represents berry growers, explained: ‘British raspberries are currently not in sea-son [so] the ones that are on shelves … will be more expensive. Once the British season begins, the price of British raspberries will be lower.’
This year British raspberries were thought to make their earliest ever appearance in supermarkets after the sunniest winter on record. Wait-rose stocked British, glasshouse- grown berries in March – weeks ear-lier than previous years.
But a topsy-turvy bout of spring weather dampened hopes of an early start to the main raspberry season, which begins this week and runs until October. Now supermarkets hope a balmy June will herald a bumper har-vest for the uK – and they expect it to send prices plummeting.
a Sainsbury’s spokesman said they are hoping to stock ‘100 per cent Brit-ish raspberries’ over the summer, while Tesco expect all raspberries in its stores ‘to be sourced entirely from Britain’ once the season is under way.