Three processes, and three prices you cannot tell apart. That is the first thing an offer leads with, and it is not what moved the price.

Priced by variety, the numbers line up the way the trade expects them to. Geisha coffee averaged $22.24 a kilo last year, Bourbon coffee $10.67, and a lot with no variety declared $8.

Sort those shipments by destination and that order collapses. Germany bought its Geisha coffee at $11.45 a kilo; Japan paid $28.94 for the same variety and China $25.38.

Four of the ten destinations that took the most volume bought their Geisha coffee below $17.48, which is what Japan was paying for Bourbon coffee over the same months.

And the Bourbon coffee that went to Germany came in above the Geisha coffee that went to Germany, a result the variety on its own cannot produce. The spread between destinations is more than twice the one the process explains.

Who ships it is not settled either. 30 Peruvian exporters shipped a named lot last year and 22 have shipped one so far this year.

Only seven appear in both, and five of them concentrate 46% of the kilos, so a shortlist built on last year's names is mostly gone.

It also helps to know the size of this trade. There are 194 shipments between January 2025 and mid August this year, and the median shipment weighs 210 kilos, closer to a pallet than to a container. At that size a single buyer paying above the average moves the average.

This shipment data has limits and they show here. It gives the price and the destination and never the reason, so cup score, farm, relationship and who blinked in the negotiation all end up inside the same number. This year runs only to 15 August, and 194 shipments are very few to call a trend.

Last year and the partial one now under way land in the same place. Whoever buys in your market has been paying a number that has more to do with your market than with the variety on the bag.

By the time the harvest gets committed the exporter already knows what your market pays for Geisha coffee. Walking into that conversation with the same number costs nothing and changes where it starts.

The list behind this piece has every Peruvian exporter that shipped a named Geisha or Bourbon coffee lot since January 2025, with its destinations, its kilos and what each market paid per kilo. A reply naming your market gets you the part of it that covers you.

Anticorrosion paper has twelve buyers in the whole country and thermal paper has more than two hundred. Three years do not settle a market, but the distance has been growing the whole time.

Between them sit six more papers, each with its own price. Sterilization is at 6.34 and paper tape at 4.97, while thermal comes in at 1.46.

An average for Peruvian paper describes none of them, and a seller who quotes against that average is pricing a product nobody buys.

The buyer count keeps running against the price. Sterilization paper, near the top, has about as many importers as anticorrosion paper, which is to say almost none.

At the other end the lists are long. Self adhesive stock has 190 importers, and thermal paper is the widest of all.

Paper tape is the one worth a second look. It holds the third highest price of the eight and still has more importers than any other, so price and buyer count do not always move together.

Aseptic board is the largest by value, and it is the one to be careful with. A single importer holds almost all of it, so what reads as a market is one account.

About a fifth of the shipments arrive with a description too generic to place anywhere. These figures leave that share out, and the record does not measure which paper those shipments carried.

For a seller the practical part is the list. The paper with the highest price has twelve names in the whole country, and the one with the lowest has more than two hundred, which are two completely different sales jobs.

The paper you make decides the price you can ask and the number of buyers you can ask it of.

If you make one of these papers, reply with the grade you produce and the volume you can ship in a month. I will come back with the Peruvian importers that bought that paper over the last three years, their names and their share of it, and what a kilo of it landed at.

Of those 33, 26 shipped no fresh fruit at all.

The export record does not explain why the two products split like this; it shows the shape and not the reason. The shape is still enough to change who you call, and when.

On price, fresh blueberry averaged $6.65 a kilo across the season and frozen averaged $2.55.

The calendars come apart as well, and that is where the two products stop being one.

Fresh puts around 70% of its kilos into the four months from August to November, and fruit, packing lines and vessel space run short in those same weeks. Frozen puts 38% there, and its heaviest stretch arrives later, from October into December.

What happens after that is the part I would keep, because it is the half of the year nobody quotes.

From March to June the fresh trade almost stops, moving under 5% of its year. Those same months carry around 24% of the frozen year, and April is an ordinary month by frozen standards.

So this changes the when more than the what. A frozen program negotiated during the fresh rush competes for attention in the weeks when fresh fruit is settling vessel space and price. The same conversation in March or April reaches the same companies with far less on their desks.

The fresh window is set by the harvest and nobody can move it. The frozen window is wide enough that the buyer picks the month. So if you buy frozen, the month to call is March or April, the names worth calling are the ones that only do frozen, and the unit to quote in is the kilo.

The Peru Blueberry Radar is the list behind this piece: every Peruvian exporter that shipped fresh or frozen blueberry last season, split by product, ranked by volume, with its destinations and its average price per kilo. Reply with your destination and whether you buy fresh or frozen, and I'll send you the scope and price for your market.

And that window starts later: November used to hold 12.9% of the volume and last season, 2025/26, it held 3.9%. What moved is the start, because the peak stayed where it was, in January.

Two seasons do not prove a trend, but a buyer who builds his calendar on a picture taken two years ago asks for a quote a month before there is fruit.

Last season Peru shipped 233 thousand tonnes of fresh mango, against 304 thousand the season before.

The value, meanwhile, came out the same: 354 million dollars against 347. A quarter less fruit and the same money point in a single direction: the price did the work.

The kilo of fresh mango averaged $1.52 last season, against $1.14 the season before. That is a third more for the same fruit.

The useful part is knowing when it happened. The price was already up in November, at $1.89 the kilo against $1.11, before the first full week of shipping.

January is the biggest month and the one that usually brings the discount, and it closed at $1.47 against $1.03. Not one of the strong months went back to where it had been.

It was not an expensive destination pulling the average up either: the large ones all moved the same way, the United States and the Netherlands included, which take the most fruit.

The list of exporters got shorter too, with 200 shipping against 234 the season before, and the ones that moved real volume are around 180. That does not move the average, but it does move the conversation, because the exporter who is still there has less fruit to hand out and more people asking for it.

That is why some buyers have already started negotiating and holding fruit for the season ahead, with the boats still idle. A quote asked for in June is asked into an empty calendar; in January it is asked when the fruit is already committed.

Two seasons still prove nothing. But the fruit of the season ahead is already being handed out, and whoever arrives in January will buy what was left.

The Peru Mango Radar is the list behind this piece: each of the 200 exporters that shipped last season, ranked by volume, with its destinations, its average price per kilo and the buyers it ships most to. Reply with your destination and I’ll send you the scope and price for your market.

That same figure was $22.41 in 2025. The level sat almost still and then moved by about a quarter. Any figure like that deserves one question before it goes into a budget, and it is the question that has quietly killed two other findings on this desk in the past week.

Alpaca tops leave Peru for two main destinations, and they pay differently. China buys the large majority of the volume at the cheaper end. Italy buys a smaller share at a higher price. When two destinations pay different prices, the overall figure moves whenever the balance between them shifts, even if neither destination changed what it pays.

A rise in the middle can therefore mean nothing at all. It can just mean more Italian tonnes and fewer Chinese ones. The honest test is to hold the destination still and look again.

China's share of volume rose across these years, from around 63% to around 70%.

China is the cheaper of the two. More weight on the cheap side should have pulled the middle down. The middle went up anyway, which means the mix was working against the finding and lost.

That is the strongest version of this test. A finding that survives a mix shift pushing in the opposite direction is not a mix artifact.

Inside China, the same figure moved from $17.27 to $27.10, and inside Italy from $24.04 to $29.40.

Both rose. The Chinese lane rose harder than the overall figure did, which is the opposite of what a mix artifact looks like.

So a Chinese spinner comparing its own two most recent seasons sees more than half again. The buyer who felt this hardest is the buyer moving the most volume.

Destination is one way to slice it. Fibre grade is the other, and the finding survives that too.

Reading the grade word out of each shipment description, baby moved up by roughly a third, and royal by a similar order. Huarizo, which sits at the coarse end and trades far cheaper, also rose. The lots whose description carries no grade word at all, which are the bulk of the trade, moved in line with the headline. Every slice points the same way.

Seven months in, the year is not closed. That matters less here than it would elsewhere, because monthly volume in this trade is unusually flat: no month carries much more than any other, so a partial year does not land inside a different season. It is why the figure is usable in August rather than next January.

The grade split is also a reading of free text. A shipment that describes its fibre precisely gets classified, and one that does not sits in the unlabelled group. That group is large, and the fact that it moved with the rest is reassuring rather than conclusive.

A collection costed on last year's fibre number is short by roughly a quarter, and by a good deal more if the yarn routes through China. That gap does not announce itself. It shows up at the invoice, after the retail price is set and the margin is committed, which is the expensive way to find out.

The cheap way is to re-cost now, while this season's contracts are still open and the number can still change what gets ordered.

Alpaca Sourcing follows Peruvian alpaca, from the fibre to the finished garment.

Over the same January to June of 2025 it shipped 64,648, and January to June of the year before came in at much the same level. The base it jumped from was flat, so this is close to four times over rather than a rebound.

The number that makes it worth reading is the price. The kilo in the middle moved from $10.60 to $10.97, comparing January to June against January to June. Supply that arrives because somebody is clearing inventory takes the price down with it. This price went up by about 3%.

Volume and price usually move against each other. Most sourcing teams read a supply jump as a discount signal and wait for the break. Here the two moved the same way. That points at demand arriving alongside the supply rather than ahead of a glut. It is the difference between a market where a buyer should wait and one where a buyer should get onto quote lists before the good exporters are committed.

The other thing worth checking on any growth number is whether it belongs to a single company. A fourfold jump driven by a single exporter winning one contract would say little about a buyer's own chances of being served.

Here it belongs to several. Two exporters multiplied their shipped volume by roughly five and seven times.

A third grew by nearly three. A fourth appeared at scale in the first stretch of this year after shipping none over those same months a year earlier.

The steadiest of the large exporters barely moved at all, which carries its own signal: the growth came from exporters building capacity rather than from the incumbent leader expanding. Nineteen exporters shipped between January and June, against fourteen a year earlier.

Germany took the most volume, ahead of Italy, the United States, the Netherlands and Australia. That ordering is worth flagging because it changes with the months you count. Measured over all three years, the United States leads. Measured on this year so far, Germany does, by a wide margin and across six different exporters. European demand is where the new volume landed.

Prices across those destinations sit within about a dollar of each other. No market is paying a premium worth routing around, which simplifies the decision: destination is a logistics question here rather than a pricing one.

June is only halfway, and a harvest does not spread evenly across six months. Comparing the same stretch of each year controls for the seasonality, and it does not settle the rest of the year. If the crop came early this year, part of the jump is timing rather than volume.

There is also a scope judgement. Goldenberry sits inside a broader dried fruit code, so these figures come from filtering shipments by what the description actually says: aguaymanto, goldenberry, physalis, uchuva. That filter keeps about 70% of the code's value and leaves the rest, which is other fruit entirely. A shipment described in a way none of those words catch sits outside these numbers.

A buyer who priced this category as thin, expensive and effectively single-source has a different situation this year. There are more exporters to put on a quote list than there were, several with fresh capacity and no long-standing exclusive relationships to protect. The ones that grew did it without discounting, so they are unlikely to compete on price alone, and they are not distressed either.

The window to build a second and a third exporter here is open while the new capacity is still looking for homes, and a quote list drawn up now costs nothing to hold.

Peru Sourcing Partners follows what leaves Peru and who ships it.

Underneath it, almost nothing is steady. Only seven of those companies show up in all three years. Twenty-two of this year's importers were not buying the year before, which is more than half the list.

So the count of doors holds and the doors themselves keep changing. That is a different market from the one the count describes, and it asks for a different kind of selling.

A buyer list built from one year of records is the standard first step for a supplier looking at a new country. It is cheap, it is concrete, and here it decays faster than the sales cycle that uses it.

By the following season roughly half those accounts are no longer importing under this code. The replacements are not the same companies under new names either. They are buyers with no incumbent relationship, which is the part worth paying attention to.

For a supplier arriving from outside, an incumbent competitor holds less ground here than it would in a market with a stable roster, because every season hands out accounts that nobody has locked down yet.

The typical order is worth $120 and weighs seven kilos. A typical buyer places two of them in a year. That combination decides how this market can be served, before any question of price comes up.

No single account justifies a visit, a local representative or a long qualification cycle. The arithmetic only works through somebody who already carries a book of these accounts and already absorbs the cost of serving them.

A couple of things are worth naming before anyone acts on it. The money moving through this code quadrupled, and that figure is not the market growing. Five shipments by one manufacturer in March carry most of it, and stripping them out leaves this year as the smallest of the three.

The second is that a customs code is not a customer list. A company can stop appearing because it changed the code it declares under, or because it bought through a trader instead. The turnover is real, and part of it is bookkeeping rather than a lost account.

If the plan was to build a list once and work it for three years, this market will not repay that. If the plan is a distributor who refreshes the list every season, the rotation stops being a problem and starts being the reason to be here, because the incumbents are meeting the same new names you are.

The expensive mistake is to read a steady count of buyers as a steady set of buyers, and to spend a year building relationships with accounts that will not be importing by the time that work pays off.

Garay | Trade Intelligence follows what moves into Peru.

It is odd because those two are the extremes of this trade. Averaged across everything they buy, Spain pays $3.52 a kilo and Thailand $1.60, with China, the largest destination by a distance, between them at $2.35. Read as a quality signal, those averages say Spain buys the good material, Thailand buys what is left, and a plant shipping to Bangkok is selling itself short.

A single cut priced identically in both markets rules that reading out. If the destination were setting the price, two markets that far apart would not meet on the same cent for the same product. Whatever decides the number is upstream of the shipping address.

Getting to that comparison takes two steps of cleaning, and the first one is the customs code. Frozen squid is 93% of the value declared under it, and scallops travel under the same code with a different price and a different buyer, so they come out before anything is measured.

The second step is the animal. Squid leaves Peru as fillet, fins, tentacles, tube, rings, necks and whole, and those are a price ladder rather than a list. Rings run at $3.87 a kilo and tentacles at $2.71, whole at $2.53, fins at $2.31, tube at $2.28 and fillet at $2.26. Necks are $1.40, the cheapest thing in the record.

Now the baskets. Of the 62.5 million kilos Thailand bought, 52.7 million are neck, which is to say Thailand is not a squid market in general but a neck market in particular. Spain sits at the other end of the same ladder, taking 17.1 million kilos of rings, 31.7 million of tentacles and 21.8 million of fillet.

Two shopping lists that far apart produce the country averages on their own, without anyone paying a premium or a discount for anything. The $1.92 that separates Spain from Thailand is the distance between a ring and a neck, priced in the same market, in the same months, out of the same plants.

Fins are where the identity is cleanest, because both destinations move enough of them to compare without the arithmetic wobbling. Tentacles come close behind at $2.83 against $2.68. Fillet does not cooperate: there the distance is real at fifty three cents, and the likeliest reading is size band rather than destination, since the grade travels inside the shipment description and not in a column that can be grouped. So the defensible claim is that most of the destination gap is composition, and not that every cent of it is.

The reason each market buys the end of the ladder it buys sits outside the record entirely. Thailand runs one of the largest seafood reprocessing industries in the world, and a reprocessor buys an input rather than a product, while Spain buys much closer to the shelf, where a ring arrives already a ring. That reading fits everything measured here and is proved by none of it.

What the country average does do, reliably, is show up in the commercial conversation. It is what gets quoted back when a price feels high, and what a plant reaches for when it wants to argue that a market pays well. Both uses describe a basket and call it a price, which is a habit worth breaking before the season starts rather than during it.

Fixing the cut, the size band and the month turns the destination into a different kind of question, one about what a market wants to receive rather than what it is willing to pay. A plant that makes only fillet never appears in a search for rings, however sharp its price looks against an average that was never about it.

Take the two origins everyone compares. Averaged over every kind of tyre, and over shipments from January 2025 to date, the median Chinese one lands in Peru at $33 and the median Indian one at $109. Median meaning half the shipments come in under that figure, which matters here more than usual, because the average is dragged around by a handful of enormous tyres. Read as price, that says India costs three times as much and has no business competing here.

The picture changes as soon as the product is held still. A tyre is not one product, and the customs code already splits it into kinds: car, truck and bus, motorcycle, bicycle, agricultural, mining and construction. Inside truck and bus, China lands at $68.49 and India at $69.60, a dollar and eleven cents apart on a tyre that costs seventy. Inside mining and construction, China runs around $250 and India around $197. Inside agricultural, China is around $208 and India around $160.

In the two families where a tyre costs hundreds, India is the cheaper of the two.

The headline gap turns out to be a difference of catalogue. China lands about 2.5 million car tyres and 2.6 million motorcycle tyres into Peru in the window, both cheap by the piece, with the median motorcycle tyre at $11.50. India barely ships a car tyre at all and concentrates in agricultural and mining sizes, where one tyre runs around $250, which is about twenty of those motorcycle tyres. An average built on two catalogues that far apart describes neither of them.

The same table answers a second question that gets asked more often than it gets checked, which is where the money in this market actually sits. Motorcycle tyres are 36.3% of every piece that crosses the border and 8.6% of the value. Truck and bus is 30.7% of the pieces and 55.8% of the value. Mining and construction is 1.4% of the pieces and 12.8% of the value, or nine times its weight in pieces.

A sales plan built on unit volume points at motorcycles, and a plan built on value points at truck, bus and mining sizes. The two plans call on different importers, quote different measurements and need different stock, so the choice between them is made long before anyone talks about price.

There is a limit worth naming before anyone acts on this. Prices here are read per piece, which is how the customs tariff counts tyres and how the trade press quotes them, and that covers around 60% of the value directly. Close to another 30% arrives declared in sets, which still counts pieces but in fours, so a set price cannot be laid beside a single price without dividing first.

Read the same data per kilo and it tells a cleaner and completely different story, which is a good reason to distrust it. By weight the United States looked like a premium origin at $8.16 a kilo. By the piece it drops out of the top eight, because weight measures the size of a tyre and price measures what it does.

There is a plausible mechanism behind the whole pattern, though the record alone does not prove it. Sizes get made where the domestic fleet demands them. India runs an enormous agricultural and commercial fleet and China runs an enormous passenger and two wheeler one, and each exports what its own factories were built to make.

Whatever the cause, the practical consequence is the same for anyone selling into Peru. Which family the buyer works in settles the origin question: China is the cheaper origin in car and motorcycle sizes, India in mining and agricultural ones. An importer of mining tyres who is told that Chinese product costs a third of the Indian one has been handed a number from the motorcycle aisle, when in their own aisle the Chinese tyre is the dearer of the two by about $50.

Most buyers never see it happen. The list was good when it was built, the names were real, and nothing announces the day one of them stops shipping.

Take the companies that shipped alpaca knitwear out of Peru two years ago. There were 182 of them.

Follow the same registrations forward to today. 101 have stopped appearing altogether.

Seventy five are present in every year. Twelve are genuinely new.

Now put the volume next to that. Alpaca garments out of Peru are flat across the same period, with the latest half year slightly ahead of where the count started.

Those two facts together are the whole read. The output did not leave. The places to buy it did.

The concentration confirms it from the other direction. The largest three alpaca companies held 45.2% of the value at the start and 49.7% now.

Half the trade sits with three names, and the share is climbing.

It is worth checking whether this is just the market as a whole contracting, because Peruvian knitwear did contract. The full product code went from 443 active companies to 362 over the same period, and the garment volume fell with them.

But that is the difference. In the wider market, companies and volume left together. In alpaca, the companies left and the volume stayed.

One is a market shrinking and the other is a market consolidating, and they call for opposite responses from a buyer.

Call it the Narrowing Bench. The output is intact and the roster carrying it is shorter every year.

The replacement flow barely exists. Twelve entrants in a year, against 101 exits over two, is roughly eight departures for every arrival.

The practical consequence arrives with a lag, which is what makes it easy to miss. A buyer working from a list built two years ago is working from a list that has lost more than half its names.

They will discover this one unanswered email at a time, while the headline volume reports that nothing has happened.

A limit that matters. A company disappearing from the record is not necessarily a company that closed.

It may have merged, changed its registration, moved its volume under a group, or stopped exporting directly and started selling through someone who does. What the number proves is that a name that used to ship no longer ships under that name.

Which is enough to act on. If the number of doors is falling while the volume behind them holds, the cost of finding a company goes up every year.

There is a plausible mechanism behind it, though I cannot prove it from the record alone. Fiber supply, working capital and the cost of holding a classed inventory all favour the larger operator in a bad year.

Whatever the cause, the effect compounds in the same direction. Every year the list is shorter, the remaining names are larger, and larger names quote larger minimums.

There is one more effect worth naming, and it lands on the buyer rather than on the market. A shorter roster means a company that would have quoted eagerly two years ago now has more work than bench, and chooses its clients.

So the same email that used to open a conversation now competes with several others for the same floor. The list did not only get shorter. The names left on it got harder to reach.

Which makes the cheapest time to build the relationship always earlier than it feels.

The honest answer sits in the shipping pattern, so I counted it. Between January 2025 and June 2026, knitwear left Peru 40,895 times, just under ten million garments in total, from 735 exporters.

Half of those shipments were 25 garments or fewer. Nearly four in ten were twelve or fewer. A shipment of alpaca knitwear runs eight garments at the median, and that is the median of eleven thousand of them.

Those small shipments are almost invisible in any total. Everything at 25 garments and below adds up to 1.5% of the garments and 3.4% of the money. Read the market by volume and this half of the traffic disappears into a rounding error.

The volume is at the far end. Shipments of a thousand garments and up are 5.9% of the traffic and carry 59.9% of everything Peru sends out.

What makes the two ends worth separating is the price. The small door averages $46 a garment. The container door averages $17. The gradient in between is unbroken, from $49 in the smallest tier down through $37 and $24 to $17 at the bottom.

My first read was that this is just sampling. Small shipments are samples, samples come from expensive makers, and the average price is high because of who ships them rather than how much they ship.

That read did not survive the check.

I took the 88 companies that shipped through both doors in the same period and compared each one against itself. In 74 of them the small shipments earned more per garment, with a median gap of about one and a half times and a middle range from 1.14 to 1.85. Same company, same year, same product line, and the small shipment carries a higher price per piece.

Which is what you would expect from a factory floor rather than from a sampling department. A short run pays for the setup, the yarn changes and the hand finishing across twelve pieces instead of two thousand. That gap is the arithmetic of a short run, and it is stable enough to plan around.

The Twelve-Garment Door, then, since twelve is about where it sits.

471 of the 735 exporters used it in the last eighteen months. Only 179 shipped anything at container scale, and 118 companies did both. For most of the industry that door is the main entrance.

The map is organised the same way. A shipment to Europe is 13 garments at the median, to Japan, Korea and China 12, to the United States 54, and to the neighbouring Latin American markets 20. Sorted by price the order barely changes: $34 a garment into Asia, $28 into Europe, $22 into the United States, $10 into the region. The buyers who work in dozens are paying the most per piece and taking the least volume, which is the shape of a specialty trade rather than a wholesale one.

The fibre splits along the same line, and here I used the tariff classification rather than the product descriptions so that the two methods stay independent.

Cotton knitwear moves in shipments of 60 garments at the median and prices at $21. Synthetic moves in 27 at $15. Fine animal hair, which is where the alpaca sits, moves in 8 at $46. The heavier the fibre leans towards craft, the smaller the shipment and the higher the price per piece.

So the answer to the buyer’s question is small, and it is not a favour anyone is doing you. A dozen garments is an ordinary transaction here, priced accordingly, executed by companies that also load containers. Per garment nothing costs more, and it still takes one box to find out whether a supplier can make what they say they can.

A limit on all of this. A short run is priced as a short run, so the cost per garment in a first order will not survive scale and should not be used to model a season. What it buys is information about the supplier.

Have you priced a first order that small? Tell me what you buy and I will point you to the Peruvian makers who already ship it at that size.

A small trade hidden inside a large one is a shape I keep meeting in Peru, in fine flavour cacao and in coloured quinoa too, so I have started calling it the Market Inside the Market. Five things give it away every time: a floor, a range, a map, a calendar and a supplier list. Geisha coffee has all five.

The floor first, because it is the most solid thing I found all week. Ninety seven batches of geisha coffee left Peru last year and not one sold below the ordinary coffee moving at the same time. Keep only batches over a hundred kilos and it holds. Keep only batches over five hundred, where a mislabeled sample cannot distort anything, and it holds again. All twenty five exporters who shipped geisha coffee cleared that line, the cheapest of them by a hair.

That floor survives the test that broke my last piece of work. With organic coffee the seal looked like it earned a premium until I compared organic and plain batches inside the same exporter, and the gap collapsed. Twenty two exporters shipped geisha coffee alongside their ordinary coffee last season, and in nineteen the geisha coffee sold above their own price, one at 4.4 times, two near 3.9, several around two. Three came out flat. The variety name does what the seal could not.

The range is where it stops behaving like a price at all. The cheapest tenth of the geisha batches sells near $10, the dearest tenth past $36, and across the twenty five exporters the spread runs $7.70 to $44.77. Nearly six to one inside a single variety name, which is a wider distance than the one between geisha coffee and ordinary coffee. The name buys the floor. Where it grew, how it was processed, how it tastes and when it was picked decide everything above it.

The map turned over when I looked at it. Asia takes about 70% of Peru’s geisha coffee by weight and 3% of its ordinary coffee, Taiwan alone on a third and China another quarter, with twelve separate exporters feeding that side. The obvious alternative, that quality simply flows east, does not hold: the other high quality coffee that carries no variety name goes west with the ordinary, four fifths of it, to France, Germany, Spain and Norway. The pull attaches to the name itself.

One caution before anyone prices off that map. Asian buyers pay more per kilo at market level, and inside single exporters selling to both sides the gap disappears. What moves is which batches go where, so I report the volume and leave the price claim alone.

The calendar is displaced by a full quarter. Ordinary coffee ships August to October, close to half the year’s volume in that window. Geisha coffee ships November to February, three fifths to four fifths of it, every year I can see. The small batches need picking over, tasting and sorting after the harvest, so this trade opens as the main season closes.

And the supplier list barely holds still. Twenty five exporters last year, seventeen of whom shipped no geisha coffee the year before, three present all three years, and a typical batch of 270 kilos.

Floor, range, map, calendar, supplier list. Every one of those five belongs to geisha coffee alone, and every one of them disappears the moment you look at Peruvian coffee as a single number. Forty five tonnes against a quarter of a million is small enough to round away, and rounding it away is most of why this trade is still open to anyone who separates it out and works it properly.

For a roaster the consequence lands in one place. The variety name on a Peruvian offer sheet promises you a floor above seven dollars and nothing else. The rest gets decided one batch at a time, in a window that opens in November, off a supplier list that will be one third familiar and two thirds new. So the sourcing question stops being what geisha coffee costs and becomes which batch, from whom, and whether anyone will tell you where it sits.

Does your supplier tell you where your coffee sits in that range? Send me a message if you want to know who actually grows and ships Peru’s geisha coffee.

First, I split the market by grade. Commodity coffee, the plain washed and natural lots that fill most containers, is more than 99% of the volume. Inside that bulk, organic and conventional track each other closely. Two years ago organic ran about a tenth above conventional. Last year they were level. This year organic sits a touch below. There is a gap, but it moves around zero, and it is nowhere near the premium a buyer expects to pay.

Second, I sorted exporters by how organic they are. The houses that ship almost entirely organic and the houses that ship almost none land within a few cents of each other, year after year.

Third, I looked inside single exporters that ship both. When the same company sends an organic lot and a plain lot in the same season, the two leave at nearly the same price. Across the exporters that do both, the organic lot is, if anything, marginally cheaper.

Fourth, I ran all of it against a second, independent dataset. It returned the same answer, close to the cent.

So the premium is real, and it comes from grade. Specialty lots move around ten dollars a kilo, and the rare geisha microlots past twenty. But those are a sliver of what Peru ships, a fraction of a percent of the volume. The certified organic that fills most containers leaves at the commodity price, and the seal opens a door without lifting the dollar per kilo.

That reframes the purchase. A buyer here is choosing a grade and an origin, and the organic seal rides along with them.

And the origin is unusually open. More than sixty exporters have shipped organic already this year, most of them grower cooperatives, and the top three hold only about a third of the volume. There is no dominant house you must route through. Forty of last year’s organic exporters shipped nothing two years earlier, so the roster keeps refreshing. On the demand side the picture is the opposite: the United States, Germany, Belgium and Canada take roughly four fifths of it. A wide, shifting supply feeding a narrow set of sophisticated buyers.

The flow is also seasonal. Most of the year’s volume ships from August to October, so the window that decides a buyer’s supply opens in a matter of weeks.

Put those together and a pattern falls out that I keep seeing in Peruvian markets. A certified grade that buyers want, priced no higher than the commodity, spread across a hundred small producers, moving in a tight season. I call it the Open-Origin Window. Paying up buys you nothing here. The advantage goes to whoever maps the field and secures a reliable origin early, before the harvest closes the year.

It runs well past coffee. Cocoa, organic banana, quinoa: wherever a certification drives demand without lifting price and the supply sits with many small growers, the same window opens. The names on the chart change. The read carries over.

If you buy organic coffee, the question is less about price than about position. Is your supply tied to one cooperative, or is it still open?

The top three importers hold 62% of the value, and almost all of the grain lands from one origin. That double concentration is the whole story. Five signals below.

The headline number

Peru imported $1.04B in corn in 2025, up 14% from $906.16M in 2023. Volume ran near 4.78 billion kg at an average landed value of $0.22 per kg. 115 importers cleared at least one shipment in 2025, and 53 of them stayed active into 2026. That second number is the working pool a sourcing or sales team actually meets at the table, not the historical roster. The structural question is how tightly that pool is held. The next four signals answer it.

How concentrated the field is

The top three importers captured 62% of 2025 value. Adm Andina, Seaboard Overseas and San Fernando sit at the head. Ranks 4 through 20 added another 38%, and the long tail of 95 importers took the remaining 1%. A category where the top three hold above 50% behaves like an oligopoly: the leaders move the volume and set the terms, and the tail discounts to win what is left. Peru corn at 62% sits firmly in that concentrated band, which means access here runs through relationships more than through price.

Who picked up share

Six importers inside the 2025 top twenty grew faster than 20% against their 2023 base, and 58 companies that recorded zero corn in 2023 cleared shipments in 2025. Even a concentrated market moves at the edges. New entrants tend to undercut on price for their first two years before normalizing, so the negotiable supply sits with the challengers rather than the incumbents. That is one of the moves the price chart reveals.

The geography behind the flow

The flow is about as concentrated by origin as it gets. Argentina supplied 94% of 2025 value, ahead of Brazil at 2% and Mexico at 2%. A market that leans on one origin this heavily is brittle: a drought, a tariff move or a port disruption against that country reroutes the whole flow inside a quarter. For anyone selling into Peru, that single number is the opening, since diversification is worth a premium when the base case is this exposed.

The three price bands inside the average

The 2025 average landed value ran at $0.22 per kg, and that headline hides three working bands. 68 importers cleared above 10% of the average, a premium tier where specification or relationship justifies the markup. 18 cleared inside the plus or minus 10% band. 29 cleared below 10% of the average, the discount tier that newcomers and large logistics-led players tend to occupy. A buyer who only meets the headline price walks past three different cost realities.

Martin Garay

The headline reads like a hospital budget line. It is not. The interesting part is how many new buyers reached into the category as it grew.

The buyer base is broad and still widening

490 or more companies cleared imports of medical and surgical instruments into Peru, and 310 of them were newcomers that had not imported the year before. New entrants at that scale tell you the demand is not locked up by a few national distributors. It is spreading across clinics, specialist importers and regional players entering as healthcare spend rises.

At the front, Alvarez Larrea Equipos Medicos, Covidien Peru and Icu Medical lead the import flow. Underneath them a fast-growing cohort is gaining ground: Roca, Nova Medical and Fresenius Medical Care del Peru are absorbing the new volume the 24% climb created. For a supplier, the newcomer tier is where the negotiable demand lives, the buyers still building their first supply lines. For an established importer, that tier is the new competition for the same shelf space.

Growth driven by capacity, not by price

A 24% climb in medical instruments is rarely a price effect. It is volume: more procedures, more equipped rooms, more disposables and instruments cycling through. That kind of demand compounds, because once a hospital standardizes on a brand or a specification, the reorders follow for years.

For a supplier going into 2026, that is the prize. A category growing on capacity rewards the vendor who gets specified into a hospital or a distributor's catalog early and stays there. The wallet share is expanding, and most of it sticks to whoever wins the first specification.

Where it comes from, and the brands behind the flow

The supply map is concentrated. The United States, China and Germany are the origins carrying most of Peru's 2025 import value. Behind those flags sit the names every procurement lead already knows: Medtronic, Arthrex and Icu Medical move a large share of the instruments and devices entering the country, alongside the specialist makers.

That concentration cuts two ways. A buyer leaning on a single dominant origin is exposed to regulatory delays, freight shocks or a supply pause on that one lane. A supplier competing into a less crowded origin or a specialist niche meets fewer peers bidding for the same accounts. The lane and the brand tier you sell or source on define the entire negotiation.

One average price, three different markets

The $2.59 per unit average sits in front of a range that runs from $1.55 to $4.14 per unit. That spread is the story. A basic disposable instrument sits near the low end. A precision or specialty device sits near the top. The average belongs to no single buyer.

A supplier who quotes against the headline is pricing into the wrong tier. A buyer who benchmarks the same way overpays on the commodity end and underestimates the specialty end. The margin lives in knowing which band a given importer actually buys, and that breaks down account by account.

What to do with this

If you sell medical and surgical instruments into Peru: the market grew 24% and brought in 310 new buyers, most still forming supply lines. Map the newcomer tier before you map a price. Specifications won early turn into years of reorders.

If you source these instruments in Peru: the 490-plus importers are not interchangeable. Origin lane, brand tier and product class set very different cost structures, and the leverage is in knowing where your counterparty sits in the range.

Martin Garay

The headline reads like a price story. It is not. The interesting part is how many new hands reached for the same supply.

The buyer base widened fast

140 or more companies cleared fertilizer imports into Peru, and 111 of them were newcomers that had not imported the year before. A wave of new buyers at that scale tells you the demand is not pooling with the incumbents. It is spreading into new accounts, distributors and growers who entered as the market expanded.

At the front, Molinos CIA, Equilibra Peru and Macrosource Peru lead the import flow. Underneath them a fast-moving cohort is gaining ground: E y M, Representaciones y Productos Para El Agro and Compo Expert are absorbing the new volume the 95% climb created. For a supplier, the newcomer tier is where the negotiable demand lives, the buyers still forming their first supply relationships. For an established importer, that same tier is the new competition for the same vessels.

A 95% climb is a supply race, not a quiet trend

When a fertilizer import market nearly doubles in a year, the constraint shifts from demand to supply. Buyers who had a single origin suddenly need a second and a third. Contracts that ran spot move to forward cover. The growers and blenders who entered this year are the ones least locked in, and they are sourcing actively going into 2026.

For a supplier, this is the opening. A category growing this fast rewards the vendor who shows up with reliable tonnage while buyers are still building their books, not the one who waits for the market to settle.

Where it comes from, and the names behind the flow

The supply map is concentrated and geopolitically loaded. Russia, China and the United States are the origins carrying most of Peru's 2025 fertilizer value. Behind those flags sit the global suppliers every blender knows: Mosaic and the Apatit group move a large share of the phosphate and potash entering the country.

That concentration is a risk and an opening at once. A buyer leaning on a single dominant origin is exposed to export quotas, sanctions and freight shocks on that one lane, and the past three years have shown how fast those move. A supplier from a less crowded origin competing into Peru meets fewer peers bidding for the same buyers. The lane you sell or source on is a strategic choice, not a default.

One average price, three different markets

The $0.59 per kg average sits in front of a range that runs from $0.35 to $0.94 per kg. That spread is the whole story. A simple urea or a bulk blend sits near the low end. A specialty or coated product sits near the top. The average belongs to no single buyer.

A supplier who quotes against the headline is pricing into the wrong tier. A buyer who benchmarks the same way overpays on commodity grades and underestimates the specialty end. The margin lives in knowing which band a given importer actually buys, and that breaks down account by account.

What to do with this

If you sell fertilizer into Peru: the market nearly doubled and brought in 111 new buyers, most of them still forming supply relationships. Map the newcomer tier before you map a price. The standing positions are won while the books are still open.

If you source fertilizer in Peru: the 140-plus importers are not interchangeable. Origin lane and product grade set very different cost structures, and the leverage is in knowing where your counterparty sits in the price range.

I pulled the structure of this market from Peru's official trade records. The public view above names the leading importers and the shape of the demand. The full picture, the complete buyer ranking, every active 2026 importer, and how each one's origins and price band break down company by company, sits in the Peru Fertilizers Importers Radar.

The full breakdown is here: Peru Fertilizers Importers and Buyers 2026

Martin Garay
martin@garaycompany.com

The headline reads like a procurement line item. It is not. Bearings are the part that fails first and gets reordered forever, so this number is a steady, recurring demand signal, and the interesting part is who carries it and where they buy from.

The buyer pool is large, and anchored by the mines

1,665 companies cleared at least one bearings import in 2025. Going into 2026, 1,055 of them are still active. That second number is the working pool a supplier actually meets at the table, not the historical list of everyone who ever imported a box.

The names at the front are the ones that move the country's heavy industry. Ferreyros, Komatsu, SKF, Metso and Distribuidora Cummins lead the import flow. These are mining dealers, equipment houses and industrial distributors, the accounts that reorder on a fixed maintenance cycle rather than a one-time project. For a supplier that is the difference between a single sale and a standing position. For a buyer it tells you the bearings that keep Peruvian mining and processing online run through a short list of serious importers, not a scattered crowd.

The demand is growing, and it is replacement demand

The 16% climb from $78.7 million in 2023 to $91.2 million in 2025 is not a one-off project spike. Bearings track operating intensity. When mines extend hours, when plants add lines, when fleets stay in service longer, the reorder volume rises with them. That is the kind of demand that compounds quietly instead of arriving in a single tender.

For a supplier going into 2026, that matters more than a flashy growth rate. A category that grows on replacement cycles rewards the vendor who gets specified into a maintenance program early and stays there. The wallet share is expanding, and most of it is being spent on parts that get reordered the moment they wear out.

Where the parts come from, and the brands behind the flow

The supply map is concentrated. The United States accounted for 33% of 2025 import value, China 12% and Japan 9%. Three origins carry most of the category.

Behind those flags sit the names every maintenance manager in Peru already knows: Caterpillar, Komatsu, Cummins and Metso feed a large share of the OEM and aftermarket bearings entering the country, alongside the dedicated bearing makers. That concentration cuts two ways. A supplier competing into the China or aftermarket lane faces a different field than one selling US-origin OEM parts, and a buyer who only sources from the dominant origin is exposed if a tariff move or a freight disruption hits that single lane. The opening is in the lanes that are not yet crowded.

One average price, many different parts

The $21 per unit average sits in front of a category that runs from a small standard ball bearing to a large engineered housing for mining equipment. 4.4 million units cleared in 2025 at that blended average, which means the figure is a mix, not a market.

A supplier who quotes against the headline average is pricing against a number that exists for almost no single line. A buyer who benchmarks the same way overpays on the commodity end and underestimates the engineered end. The margin lives in knowing which part of the range a given importer actually buys, and that breaks down account by account.

What to do with this

If you sell bearings into Peru: the demand is recurring and the buyer pool is anchored by a short list of mining and industrial accounts that reorder on a cycle. Map that list before you map a price. The standing positions are won inside maintenance programs, not on a single quote.

If you source bearings in Peru: the 1,055 active importers are not interchangeable. Origin lane, brand and part class set very different cost structures, and the leverage is in knowing where your counterparty sits.

I pulled the structure of this market from Peru's official trade records. The public view above names the leading importers and the shape of the demand. The full picture, the complete buyer ranking, every active 2026 importer, and how each one's origins and part profile break down company by company, sits in the Peru Bearings and Housings Importers Radar.

The full breakdown is here: Peru Bearings and Housings Importers Radar

Martin Garay

The headline is easy to read as a story about scale, about a few giant packers consolidating a national crop. It is not. The interesting part of this market is how little of it the leaders actually hold.

The pool is smaller than the roster, and flatter than you think

352 companies cleared at least one avocado shipment in 2025. By 2026, 204 of them were still active. That second number is the one that matters. It is the working pool a procurement team or a competing exporter actually meets at the table, not the historical list of everyone who ever shipped a box.

Now the structure. The top three exporters, Avocado Packing CO, Westfalia Fruit and Sociedad Agricola Drokasa, captured 19% of 2025 value between them. Ranks four through twenty added another 42%. The long tail, more than 330 exporters, accounted for the rest.

Nineteen percent at the top is a fragmented market, not a concentrated one. In a concentrated category the leaders set the price and the tail discounts to survive. In a fragmented one every shipment is contestable and a buyer meets a fresh counterparty almost every quarter. Peru avocado sits firmly in the second camp. For a buyer that means optionality. For a seller it means the category rewards price discipline and consistency, not just size.

The volume is moving toward the challengers

Inside the top twenty, several exporters grew far faster than the category. The clearest case: Asr Trading expanded from $11.45 million in 2023 to $35.40 million in 2025. Names like Marand CO, Fruglobe and Agrocosta are in the same fast-growing cohort. These are the companies absorbing the new wallet share that the 42% climb created.

Underneath them, 179 exporters who shipped zero avocado in 2023 cleared volume in 2025. New entrants at that scale tell you the category still has room: capacity is coming online, and first-year entrants tend to price below the market for a season or two before they normalize. If you are sourcing, that is where the negotiable supply lives. If you are selling, that is where your new competition is forming.

This is the part the headline number hides. The growth is not pooling at the top. It is spreading into the challenger tier and the newcomer tier, exactly the part of the field that is still open to a new relationship.

Where it ships, and the risk inside the map

The flow is geographically narrow. The Netherlands took 33% of 2025 value, Spain 19%, the United States 15%. Three destinations carry most of the category.

A market with one dominant destination is brittle. A tariff move or a port disruption against the lead market reroutes the entire flow inside a quarter, and the price pressure lands on everyone shipping that lane. The flip side is the opening: the United States share is the one to watch, and any buyer competing into a less crowded destination faces fewer peers bidding for the same containers. The same recurring buyers show up across these routes, but the negotiating leverage shifts a lot depending on which lane you are on.

One average price, three different realities

The $1.77 per kg average is a single number standing in front of three separate markets. 119 exporters cleared more than 10% above it, the premium tier where specification, certification or a relationship justifies the markup. 102 cleared inside the band around the average, where most of the volume sits. 131 cleared more than 10% below, the discount tier that newcomers and logistics-led players tend to occupy.

A buyer who only quotes the headline price is negotiating against an average that does not exist for any single supplier. The premium you pay or the discount you capture depends entirely on which of the three bands your counterparty actually lives in.

What to do with this

If you buy Peruvian avocado: the fragmentation is your leverage. The supply you can still negotiate sits in the challenger and newcomer tiers, not with the three names at the top. Map your shortlist by price band before you talk price.

If you sell it: the category is growing but it does not reward size alone. The volume is moving to disciplined challengers, and the destination map is narrow enough that lane choice is a strategic decision, not an afterthought.

I pulled the structure of this market from Peru’s official trade records. The public view above names the leaders and the shape of the field. The full picture, the complete top twenty ranking, who lost share, and how each exporter’s destinations and price band break down company by company, sits in the Peru Fresh Avocados Suppliers Radar.

The full breakdown is here: Peru Fresh Avocados Exporters and Suppliers 2026

Martin Garay

The 55 active exporters tell a more interesting story. The category is more concentrated than most Peru fresh produce, the market leader is also the fastest grower, fourteen newcomers entered the category and one of them already ranks third overall, the United States absorbs 62.5% of value with no European hub in sight, and almost all pricing sits inside a narrow $3 to $5 per kg band with no specialty cluster above it.

Here are the five signals from this season worth paying attention to.

1. Concentration sits high, the long tail stays thin

The top three exporters by 2026 YTD value (Ta Export, Agroexportaciones Nathanael, and Saex Export) hold 31.2% of the category combined, $20.85M out of $66.76M. The mid-tier (ranks 4 to 20) holds 55.8% at $37.26M. The long tail of 35 exporters holds only 13.0%, $8.66M shared across more than half the active list.

For a fresh produce category, this concentration sits on the higher end. The bulk of negotiable supply lives in two tiers: the top three, and the seventeen mid-tier exporters where most of the growth and price spread sits. Below that, individual exporters average less than $250K YTD each.

For sourcing teams, the practical implication is that switching options outside the top twenty are thinner than they appear. The category is not fragmented in the way avocado is. A Peruvian asparagus sourcing strategy negotiates against a smaller universe of viable suppliers, with the top three setting reference points the rest of the category responds to.

2. The market leader is also the fastest grower

Three Peruvian asparagus exporters grew above 50% year over year through Week 17 of 2026, all of them inside the 2026 top twenty. Corporacion Agroexportica at +103.3% to $2.20M. Ta Export at +97.0% to $8.69M. Gestion Empresarial & Logistica at +78.8% to $1.59M.

The pattern is unusual. Ta Export holds the number one position in the 2026 ranking and is also the fastest grower in the top twenty. Scale is expanding at the top of the category, with the leader nearly doubling its YTD value while holding rank one. In avocado, the high-growth cluster sat below the top tier. In asparagus, it includes the leader.

Pricing across the three sits at $4.18 to $4.26 per kg, all slightly above the market average of $4.10 per kg. None of the high-growth exporters is buying share with a price discount.

For sourcing teams, the implication is that capacity decisions through 2026 are moving inside relationships these three are willing to expand. A leader scaling at +97% has either added growing area, processing capacity, or destination accounts in the past twelve months. Mid-season is when those commitments become contracts. Buyers who wait until late season find the high-growth tier already committed.

3. A newcomer ranks third in the category from zero last year

Fourteen new exporters entered Peruvian asparagus in 2026 with zero shipments in the same period of 2025. The leading newcomer, Saex Export, ranks third overall in the 2026 category at $5.23M YTD through Week 17.

Saex priced at $3.32 per kg, below the market average of $4.10. The newcomer cohort priced at $3.49 per kg on a volume-weighted basis, a 15% discount to the category average. The position is consistent with capturing volume rather than charging a premium.

Saex shipped 100% of its 2026 value to the United States. The newcomer used the dominant destination as the entry route, which is the path of least friction for a first-year exporter scaling fast. Concentration on a single destination at this stage is a deliberate choice, not a constraint.

For buyers, this means category capacity expanded by fourteen sourcing options in twelve months, with the leading newcomer already at top-three scale. Qualification work is required, but the supply itself is not constrained. A newcomer reaching rank three inside a single season signals that the asparagus category in Peru is open to investable scale entries, which is unusual for a category this concentrated.

4. The United States absorbs 62.5%, no European hub exists

Peruvian asparagus exports concentrate in one destination through Week 17 of 2026. The United States absorbs 62.5% of total value at $41.73M YTD. Below it, three markets split the second tier almost evenly. The United Kingdom holds 9.3% at $6.19M. The Netherlands holds 9.3% at $6.18M. Spain holds 8.8% at $5.87M.

Below those four, the long tail of destinations is unusually thin. Belgium, Brazil, Japan, Colombia, Germany, and Switzerland each account for less than 1% of value. There is no second European hub for Peruvian asparagus the way the Netherlands operates for avocado, where it absorbs 42.5% of category value as a single port concentration.

The shape of the asparagus category is structurally different. For sourcing teams in Europe, three peer importing countries split roughly equal volumes. Buyers in any of them are effectively competing with two near-equivalent counterparts for the same secondary tier of Peruvian supply.

For sellers and growers, the U.S. concentration ratio sets the rhythm of the category. Demand cycles, retail pricing windows, and food-service buying patterns in the United States flow through to Peruvian production decisions more directly than in any other Peru fresh produce origin. Diversification routes through the European trio are the only meaningful counterweight in 2026.

5. A single industrial band, no specialty cluster

Peruvian asparagus prices through Week 17 of 2026 sit in a single dominant industrial band between $3.00 and $5.00 per kg. Of 55 active exporters, 48 fall inside that band and account for $55.74M of category value. The market average is $4.10 per kg, the median is $4.03.

Above the industrial band, five exporters operate between $5.00 and $7.00 per kg, contributing $10.94M of value. Below it, two exporters price under $3.00 per kg with a combined $0.09M. Above $7.00 per kg, there are no exporters at all. The specialty cluster that exists in other Peruvian fresh produce categories is absent in asparagus.

The pricing structure is unusual. Avocado has a low-price cluster (85 exporters under $2.00 per kg, $54.13M) and a small specialty tier reaching $5.71 per kg. Asparagus has neither. Almost all volume sits inside a narrow $2 per kg window where grade differentiation is compressed.

For buyers, the implication is that pricing intelligence in this category is simpler than in fragmented commodities. The category does not segment by grade in a wide spread. Negotiation reference points sit close together.

For sellers, the absence of a specialty band is itself a signal. There is no certified-organic, varietal, or premium-channel premium currently being captured at scale. The premium tier is open and not yet contested. A grower or processor positioning asparagus into a specialty channel above $7 per kg has no incumbent to displace.

What this all means

The 2026 Peruvian asparagus season is not flat. It is concentrating at the top while opening at the entry point.

The market leader is scaling fastest. A newcomer reached rank three from zero. The category remains structurally tied to the United States while three European markets split a smaller second tier. Pricing collapses into a single industrial band with no specialty premium captured at scale.

For buyers placing summer and fall orders in the next eight weeks, the supplier landscape they negotiate against is shaped by a small number of viable counterparts whose growth trajectories diverge sharply. Sourcing teams that update their reference set against current 2026 data hold a structural information advantage over teams running off 2025 lists.

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The full Peru Asparagus Sourcing Intelligence 2026 brief covers the complete segmentation of all 55 active exporters, named decliners and at-risk suppliers, per-exporter destination concentration, and named supplier recommendations sized to annual sourcing volume (under $1M, over $1M, new buyer). Contact martin@garaycompany.com to request the brief updated to the latest week 2026.

The 209 active exporters tell a different story. Leadership has reshuffled, a high-growth cluster is building capacity below the top tier, 72 newcomers entered without a quality discount, two destinations absorb 62% of value, and prices climbed +7.8% while volume contracted -7.9%.

Here are the five signals from this season worth paying attention to.

1. Fragmentation is the structural fact

The top three exporters by 2026 YTD value (Marand, Fruglobe, and Westfalia) hold only 17.8% of the category combined. The mid-tier (ranks 4 to 20) holds 39.0%. The long tail of 189 exporters holds 43.2%, $126.74M moving through suppliers below the top 20.

This is unusually distributed for an agricultural commodity where brand and certification typically concentrate flow. The next 17 ranked exporters each contribute between 1.3% and 5.3% of total value. None approaches dominance.

For sourcing teams, the practical implication is optionality. No single supplier sets the price anchor. No volume bottleneck depends on one relationship. Switching from one mid-tier exporter to another faces a liquid market with genuine competition at every tier.

2. The high-growth cluster sits below the top tier

Five Peruvian avocado exporters grew above 50% year over year through Week 17 of 2026. Three above 100%: Tal at +419.9% to $9.45M, Fresh Fruits Cks at +268.1% to $7.35M, and Sociben at +135.9% to $4.42M. Three Rivers and Inka Select round out the cluster at +53.7% and +50.3%.

These are not the market leaders. Each operates between $4.4M and $11.8M YTD, well below the top tier where buyer relationships are typically already locked. The growth is happening at mid-tier scale, where new buyers can be absorbed without displacing incumbent commitments.

Pricing across the five sits at $1.99 to $2.57 per kg, bracketing the market average of $2.23 per kg. None charges a growth premium. A supplier moving from $2M to $9M in twelve months is actively building capacity and accepting orders. A supplier flat or contracting from a large base is fully committed to existing buyers. The early-season window through May is when these capacity decisions get committed.

3. Seventy-two newcomers entered at market price

Seventy-two new exporters entered the Peruvian avocado category in 2026, none of them shipping in the same period of 2025. The leading newcomer is Masojo Peru at $4.55M YTD through Week 17, pricing at $2.38 per kg.

Newcomers across the cohort price at $2.11 per kg on average, below the market median of $2.15 per kg and the market average of $2.23 per kg. New supply is entering without a quality discount and without a premium.

For buyers, this means category capacity expanded by 72 sourcing options in twelve months, all of them with no prior buyer commitments. Qualification work is required, but the supply itself is not constrained. The pattern reflects a category that continues to attract growers at investable scale.

4. Two destinations absorb 62%, the rest opens up

Peruvian avocado exports concentrate heavily in two destinations through Week 17 of 2026. The Netherlands absorbs 42.5% of total value at $124.7M YTD. Spain takes 19.5% at $57.2M. Together those two markets account for 62% of all Peruvian avocado dollars.

Below them, the distribution opens up. China holds 9.3% at $27.2M YTD. The United Kingdom holds 7.0%. Russia holds 5.8%. Korea holds 3.0%. Italy holds 1.9%. Each of these markets has fewer competing buyers than the Netherlands or Spain.

For sourcing teams building 2026 contracts, the concentration ratio matters in a non-obvious way. A buyer sourcing from multiple Peruvian suppliers may hold what looks like supplier diversification while still concentrating destination exposure in one or two European markets. Underutilized destinations are where competition is lowest. The opportunity through 2026 sits in routes the dominant European buyers are not yet contesting.

5. Price tiers map to product grade

Peruvian avocado prices through Week 17 of 2026 sit in a tight industrial cluster between $2.00 and $2.65 per kg, with a market average of $2.23 per kg and a median of $2.15 per kg. The cluster covers the majority of active exporters by value (105 of them, $230.74M).

Two outlier segments operate at the edges. Below $2.00 per kg, a small number of exporters price as low as $0.58 per kg, signaling either distress pricing, lower-grade product, or non-standard channels. Above $4.00 per kg, a separate cluster reaches $5.71 per kg, signaling specialty positioning, organic certifications, or premium varieties.

The price spread maps to product grade. Buyers seeking standard fresh Hass for industrial channels can target the $2.15 to $2.65 per kg band where most volume sits. Buyers building specialty programs can identify the high-end exporters where the price signals product differentiation rather than overpricing.

Across 2026 through Week 17, prices climbed 7.8% year over year while volume contracted 7.9%. The dollar headline stayed flat because price absorbed the volume decline. The price band has held within a tight range across the early peak season, giving buyers a clear reference point for negotiating new contracts in the months ahead.

What this all means

The 2026 Peruvian avocado season is not flat. It is reorganizing.

Historic leaders that buyers may have relied on in 2025 have shipped near zero through April 17. New leaders have emerged at the top by 2026 YTD. A high-growth cluster is building capacity at mid-tier scale, accepting new buyer relationships without displacing incumbents. Seventy-two newcomers expanded the supplier base without entering at a discount. Two destinations dominate, leaving five markets where buyer competition is lower.

For buyers placing November and December orders in the next six weeks, the supplier landscape they negotiate against is not the same one they used in 2025. Sourcing teams that update their reference set against current 2026 data hold a structural information advantage.