October 29, 2015

The wettest August in Met Office recorded history has meant that UK pumpkins have been sitting in deeply wet soil, creating rot and soft spots in the UK pumpkin crop that will advance to full-blown issues in the ambient temperatures of retail stores.

There are larger-sized pumpkins in the fields, but the wetness is resulting in a 50% drop in output from the originally planned crop.

Up until August, the growing season was progressing with near perfect conditions. "If only Halloween was 6 weeks earlier,” said Jon Barfoot, Commercial Director at UK farming company, Barfoots, ”they are ticking time-bombs."

The UK Halloween trend has followed closely upon the U.S. tradition, with Halloween now the second major holiday festival in the country after Christmas. The U.S. Halloween pumpkin market is now worth $180 million at farmgate compared to Britain’s which is worth about £6 million (US$9.2 million). But when considering that there are 300 million consumers in the U.S. compared to 65 million in the UK, the ratio indicates a pro-rata market opportunity of about £18 million ($27.6 million) in the UK for ornamental pumpkins.

The most challenging aspect to ornamental pumpkin production in the UK, according to Barfoot, is low quality and the amount of grading-out that producers must engage in, and the indirect cost of truck loads of rejected pumpkins.

"On the supply-side, pumpkins are very labor intensive to grade and are expensive to transport. Last year’s crop was a complete disaster so the mood in the market for predatory pricing this year has been low,” said Barfoot. "On the selling-side, retailers strategically price pumpkins to drive footfall into the lucrative GM Halloween festive aisles (costumes, masks, paraphernalia, party food/drink etc), as without pumpkins there isn’t really a Halloween event."

Another challenge the industry faces is the extremely finite season, pumpkin sales basically stop dead at Halloween. “There are no prizes for holding any stock on the 32nd of October,” adds Barfoot.