Northern Italy's tomato processors took in a record 929,000 tonnes of fruit by Aug. 2, industry data show, but growers expect yields to fall from around Aug. 20, pointing to a smaller output of tomato concentrate.

Deliveries to the northern basin ran more than 50 per cent above the five-year average for the same week, according to OI Pomodoro, the basin's inter-branch body. Producer organisations forecast a drop in yield after Aug. 20-25, the World Processing Tomato Council said in a crop update on Aug. 14.

The council raised its forecast for the Italian crop to 6.35mn tonnes in that update, from 5.8mn at the end of March, and lifted the northern basin alone to 3.25mn tonnes. It warned of "a certain risk for lower yields on the medium and late crop".

Planted area in the north is up about 7 per cent for conventional crops and by as much as 19 per cent for organic.

Yields in Lombardy, which accounts for 21 per cent of the northern planted area, were already about 10 per cent below average in early August, and as much as 30 per cent lower where hail and waterspouts hit, farm group Coldiretti Lombardia said on Aug. 2, as the Cremona harvest began about 10 days early. The council put the north's early crop at average yield and recorded late-July rain and hail across several thousand hectares in Ferrara, Ravenna and Mantua.

Week 31 alone brought in 415,000 tonnes, the strongest week of the season, at factories the council says have very limited spare capacity. Harvest opened on July 9 with cherry and specialty varieties and on July 13 with round tomatoes, about a week early.

Parma, in the Po valley, recorded 53 days above 32°C and 25 above 35°C between June 1 and Aug. 15, according to ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli. Santa Amalia, in the western Spanish region of Extremadura, which grows about 70 per cent of Spain's processing tomatoes, recorded 69 and 48. Both points had their hottest June and July in six years of consistent daily records, ahead of 2022. The council put northern Italian anomalies at 3°C to 4°C above normal in early August.

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Soluble solids on northern round tomatoes fell to 4.89 degrees brix in week 31, from 5.1 on July 19 and against an average of 5.09. The defect rate stood at 4.56 per cent, and the payment index, which scales what growers receive against the contract reference, was 96.8 per cent. Brix determines how much paste a tonne of fruit yields, meaning a record delivery of raw tomatoes is not a record output of concentrate.

Maximum temperatures at Ferrara and Parma are forecast to fall by about 5°C and 7°C between Aug. 19 and Aug. 21, with all 50 members of the ECMWF ensemble cooler on the later date, on Open-Meteo data accessed via Cropli. At Santa Amalia, every member puts Aug. 17 above 37°C before the median falls to about 31°C on Aug. 20. The Po basin authority expected temperatures to return close to the seasonal average from Aug. 17, in a bulletin on Aug. 13. The council said the heatwave "seems to end beginning next week".

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Most of the crop still in the field is Spanish and southern Italian. Extremadura had delivered 30 to 35 per cent of its tomatoes by Aug. 14 and Andalusia had processed half its crop, while satellite survey put the Italian centre and south at about 30 per cent of planted surface on Aug. 10.

"Yields are good so far, but we expect reduction in yields for medium and late harvests," the council said of Extremadura, holding the Spanish forecast at 2.7mn tonnes. It also reported growing mite attacks in the region "due to the phase-out of plant protection products used to control them".

Grupo Conesa, which expects to process about 1mn tonnes of Extremadura's crop, had transformed roughly 27 per cent of its contracted volume by Aug. 11. The fruit had ripened correctly and "for the moment, it is all going with a degree of normality", Chief Executive Manuel Vázquez told the regional outlet Región Digital. The medium and late crop had "surely been affected by the various heatwaves we have had during the months of June, July and even August", he said. Growers' associations in the region have put losses on late varieties at 20 to 40 per cent.

Italy now leans more heavily on the Iberian crop than in the past. Spain supplied 33.0 per cent of Italy's tomato paste and purée imports by value in 2025, its largest single source, against 8.5 per cent in 2023, with Portugal third at 14.6 per cent, customs data accessed via Cropli show. China, which supplied 48.0 per cent in 2023, fell to 12.6 per cent. The shares move the same way when measured in tonnes.

The council is "concerned about the late crop" in the Italian centre and south. In Puglia, where planted area is up 10 per cent on last year, "the increase in cultivated area is not translating into an increase in production per hectare", Filomena Sacco, president of Confcooperative Puglia Agricoltura e Pesca, said in Italian on Aug. 6. Yields were coming in below average despite excellent quality, she said, warning that lower yields on top of still-high costs and a lower contract price risked a sharp squeeze on farm incomes.

The northern framework agreement was signed on March 27, more than three months before the first fruit was picked, at 137 euros a tonne, 5.50 euros below 2025 and with premiums paid separately last year folded into the headline. The centre and south settled on June 18 at 140 euros a tonne for round tomatoes, 10 euros lower than a year earlier. Extremadura contracted in February at 107 euros, unchanged. The growers' union UPA-UCE puts production costs there at 137 euros a tonne, citing University of Extremadura studies, and argues any contract below that figure conflicts with Spain's food chain law, which bars buying below the cost of production.

Flow in the Po at Pontelagoscuro, in Ferrara, one of the north's two largest tomato provinces, was 233 cubic metres a second on Aug. 12, against the 450 threshold below which salt water pushes up the delta. The district's 30-day drought index reads "severe" at every reference section, and "extreme" at two. Water abstraction in Parma and Piacenza was to be suspended entirely under minimum-flow rules, leaving growers there on well water. Extremadura's reservoirs, by contrast, were 70.65 per cent full on Aug. 10, about 20 points above the 10-year average.

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The council is expected to publish its next crop update at the end of August. "Making forecasts is difficult," Francesco Mutti, chief executive of Parma processor Mutti, said in Italian on July 17. "Even when the campaign is 80 per cent complete, weather events can occur that change the outcome of the year within a few hours."