Blueberries: a booming business in SA

COVID-19 has been described as a ‘great accelerator’ of a wide variety of macrotrends, such as business digitalisation, e-commerce, and working from home. The same can be said for the growing trend towards healthy eating as the pandemic kicked blueberry consumption into overdrive in both the fresh and frozen categories.

Double-digit sales growth was a common feature for blueberries at retail level in mature and developing markets, offsetting reductions at food service level due to pandemic-related lockdowns.

Globally, the area under blueberry production increased from about 133 000ha in 2016 to 206 000ha in 2020, while production of the fresh and frozen fruit reached 1,4 million tons last year.

Blueberries are becoming more commonplace in