European Market – Fruit and Vegetables, Part Five2 min read

Welcome to the fifth installment of our multi-part article for the “Best Food Importers” site, the no 1 world directory of food importers and distributors from all over the world. In the previous installments, we focused on the social trends that nowadays, due to the fact that are more and more embraced by the masses of consumers, act as truly defining market forces for the food retailing economical endeavors in the European countries, be it countries that are members of the European Union, or countries that do not yet posses this quality.

Now we shall turn our attention on the trends that are, in their nature, of a technological provenance. CBI (“Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries”) recently published a study that accentuated the importance of these trends, as well as several advices and considerations that must not be overlooked by the potential suppliers of the best food importers from Europe.

Chief amongst these trends is the constant improvement of the systems that control the maximum residue level (MRL) found in the imported food products. The overall acceleration of the technological progress, a reality that defines the world’s economy on an international level, led to the advent of better and better testing apparatus, and this, in consequence, led to the present situation in which lower levels of MRLs do not manage anymore to pass undetected. Be that as it may, even if the need to lower the current maximum residue levels is an ever-present concern for the best food importers and their suppliers alike, the appearance of new categories of MRL is the more pressing issue when it comes to the food retailing market, especially in the European region.

Even if the European Union legislatively imposed standards are not yet consistent across the board, food importers and retailers monitor with increased frequency the MRLs found in the products of their suppliers and potential suppliers and often are self-imposing quite draconian standards of no more than one third of maximum residue level to be found in the products that they are offering to their customers. Therefore, special care must be given not only to the products supplied, but also to the boxes these products are transported in, which can also be contamination vectors.

As was the case of the previous trends we focused on this series of installments, the attitude towards MRLs is more prevalent in the northwestern countries of Europe, but it gains more and more adherence amongst the best food importers and customers from southern and eastern countries of the European continent.

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