Peru's blueberry exporters shipped 39 per cent less fruit in the week to 27 September than a year earlier, in what should be the peak of the season, as heat from an extraordinary coastal El Niño runs through the harvest.

Shipments fell to 12,387 tonnes in week 39, according to the weekly report of ProArándanos, the country's association of blueberry growers and exporters.

The season's lead over last year narrowed to 10 per cent, from 18.7 per cent a week earlier, with cumulative shipments at 148,855 tonnes.

The association expects about 229,000 tonnes from week 39 to the end of the campaign, 14.2 per cent less than in the same weeks last season. The shortfall is steepest over the next eight weeks, when it expects shipments to fall to 108,000 tonnes from 156,000 tonnes a year earlier.

In September it still expected shipments to peak in mid-October at about 16,500 tonnes a week; it now expects them to plateau at about 13,500 tonnes, against last season's peak of 20,942 tonnes in week 40.

ProArándanos projected on 1 October that the 2026/27 campaign would close at about 366,000 tonnes, down from the roughly 383,000 tonnes shipped in 2025/26, despite about 15 per cent more area in production.

It was the association's second cut since 5 August, when it had projected 404,366 tonnes. It said El Niño had hit harder than it had anticipated.

"Most likely, Peru's peak will be as we indicated in the previous release, or lower," Miguel Bentín, president of ProArándanos, told the consultancy Blueberries Consulting at the Fruit Attraction trade fair in Madrid. A new revision was due in mid-October.

"The feeling is that it is probable we will see another adjustment, but we have no greater certainty about that at this moment," he said.

The heat has strengthened as the season has gone on. Overnight minimum temperatures in the first week of October were the highest for those days in 87 years at all six of Cropli's northern monitoring points, according to ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli.

They ran 4.9C to 6.3C above the 1991-2020 normal. In August and September, as the plants moved through fruit set – the stage when flowers become berries – and into harvest, minima ran 3.4C to 4.8C above normal.

That was a record at five of the six points: Piura; Olmos and Mochumi, in Lambayeque; and Chepén and Virú, in La Libertad. At Huarmey, in Ancash, only 1997, the year of a super El Niño, was warmer.

[explore layer="origin-chart" originId="research-blueberry-peru" pointId="peru-blueberries-ancash" tab="temperature" title="Huarmey temperatures against the 30-year envelope" subtitle="Daily temperature at the Ancash monitoring point, against the 1991-2020 P10-P90 band"]

The austral winter, when the plants set flowers for the campaign, ranked among the three warmest since 1940 at all six northern points.

The Lima post of the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) has described "a sunny, warm, and dry climate with cool nights" as what allows the coast a nearly year-round harvest. SENAMHI, Peru's national weather service, said the city of Piura reached 34.2C on 12 July, beating the July record of 33.4C set in 1997.

Rows of blueberry bushes in fruit on the Peruvian coast near Trujillo, with white shade netting strung above the field and arid desert hills behind

The 2023 winter is the industry's reference point. A low-pressure system brought heavy rain and flooding to the north coast from March to May that year.

A fall and winter 4C to 5C above average then "particularly stressed the Ventura and Biloxi varieties", whose blooming cycles were disrupted, "leading to reduced fruit", the FAS post said.

Its later figures put Peru's 2023/24 production down 15 per cent and exports down 17 per cent, to 242,000 tonnes. Bentín said the shape of this season's export curve resembled 2023's, although the causes were not necessarily the same.

This year the damage has arrived in a different order. In 2023 it showed first as a late start: September US imports from Peru more than halved, to 11,500 tonnes.

This season the heat pulled fruit forward. US imports from Peru more than doubled to 17,300 tonnes in August, the most for the month in US Census Bureau data going back to 2020, accessed via Cropli.

By week 33, Peru's cumulative shipments were 65 per cent ahead of the previous season. Through week 39, shipments to the United States were up 26 per cent and made up nearly half the total, while those to China were down 24 per cent, ProArándanos said.

[explore products="081040" view="chart" partner="PE" series="dual" title="US imports from Peru, value against volume" subtitle="HS 081040, fresh cranberries, blueberries and other Vaccinium, annual, US Census Bureau via Cropli"]

Bentín said the early northern volumes, helped by the expansion of the Sekoya varieties, were no longer contributing as much, and that less-affected regions lacked the scale to make up the difference.

Agrícola Cerro Prieto, whose 1,300 hectares of blueberries are all in Lambayeque, expects its exports to fall to 24,000 tonnes this season from 27,000 tonnes in the last one.

"There is little flowering on the plants, it is harder for the fruit to set and the berries don't grow much," Daniel Bustamante, its commercial director, told Agraria.pe on 22 September.

Camposol, Peru's largest blueberry exporter, said in August that El Niño could cut 15 per cent from the more than 50,000 tonnes it had planned to export. Agualima, another exporter, said high temperatures had affected the second flowering; it expected volumes to recover towards the end of the year, but its initial forecasts were unlikely to be met, FreshPlaza reported on 9 October.

The south has held up better. At Chincha, in Ica, overnight minima ran 1.2C above normal over the winter, about a third of the northern anomaly, and only 0.8C above normal in the first week of October. Ica supplied 17 per cent of Peru's shipments by week 33.

"As of today, our farm projections are still in line with our initial budget," Isabel Tavera, vice-president of Pacific Produce, which farms in Ica, Pisco and Barranca, told The Produce News on 1 September.

José Antonio Gómez, founder of the consultancy AgroValue, said in a webinar reported on 2 July that his firm's model put flowering losses from the April-to-July heat at up to 65 per cent in Piura, against about 7 per cent in Ica.

[chart slug="peru-blueberry-warm-winter-agrovalue-flowering-loss"]

The shortfall lands on a concentrated market. Peru supplied 55.2 per cent of US imports of fresh blueberries and other Vaccinium by value in 2025, up from 38 per cent in 2019, according to US Census Bureau data.

Mexico supplied 23.7 per cent; Chile's share has more than halved, to 10.2 per cent.

[explore products="081040" view="chart" series="stackedArea" years="2015-2025" title="US fresh blueberry imports by origin, 2015-2025" subtitle="HS 081040 import value by supplier; Peru has risen past half the market as Chile has receded"]

In 2023 the average value of US imports from Peru rose 48 per cent, to $7.95 a kilogram, according to the Census Bureau data.

"When the world's largest supplier has less fruit available, it's reasonable to expect upward pressure on prices," Ricardo Naranjo, Camposol's chief executive, told Bloomberg in August.

The first price figures for the peak point the other way. Peru's blueberry exports fell 20 per cent to 63,625 tonnes in September, and 33 per cent in value, according to an analysis by Preciso Consultoría and Fresh Fruit Perú reported by FreshPlaza on 13 October.

The average export price fell 16 per cent, to $6.06 a kilogram, and fruit shipped to the United States averaged $6.14, also down 16 per cent.

The berries are smaller than usual: fruit of 12 to 18 millimetres has been recorded in varieties that typically reach 22 to 24 millimetres. As a result, the analysis assumes prices 3 to 12 per cent below 2025 levels from October.

European importers expect a gap early next year. "From January through to March, we'll therefore see very few Peruvian berries on the market; at most, a few will be flown in," Rob Pakvis of Dutch importer Berryland told FreshPlaza in August.

Chile's blueberry committee forecasts fresh exports of 95,107 tonnes this season, up 2 per cent, peaking from late November to mid-January.

"Lower supply from Peru will create opportunities for Chilean fresh fruit," said Andrés Armstrong, the committee's executive director. Chilean fruit faces a 12.5 per cent surcharge in the United States.

"Should weather-related challenges affect South American supply, there may be an opportunity for Morocco to capitalize in the back end of the South American season," Greg Murdoch, chief executive of African Blue, said in July.

ENFEN, Peru's multi-agency El Niño commission, said on 28 September that sea warming off the coast would stay at extraordinary levels through January 2027.

Globe view of the Pacific Ocean coloured by sea surface height anomaly, with a band of red, higher-than-normal water stretching along the equator to the coast of South America

It forecast air temperatures well above normal along the whole coast, with a high probability of new records, and above-normal rain on the north coast from October to December.

Bentín said temperatures were expected to stay particularly high through November, December and the Peruvian summer.

The industry's concern was moving to the next growing cycle, he said. Blueberry photosynthesis is most efficient at about 20C to 25C, depending on the variety, Jorge Retamales told an industry seminar in Trujillo in July.

As temperatures rise, respiration can exceed photosynthesis, he said, drawing down carbohydrate reserves and hurting both the current crop and root development for the following season.

ENFEN's next communiqué is due on 15 October.