Italy is the second largest processing tomato producer worldwide, second only to California, but its position is threatened by China. Italy produced 4 million tons of processing tomatoes in 2013, and China about 3.8 million. Thanks to its rapid growth trend in 2014 China’s production, after a period of decline, returned to 5 million, reaching Italy’s production, while California’s production registered 2.2 million tons last year. The other leading producing countries are: Turkey, Spain, Iran, Brazil and Portugal, according to the World Processing Tomato Council, data of february 2015.
World production of processing tomatoes has experienced a continuous decrease from 2009 to 2013, declining from 42.3 million tons to the more modest figure of 33.2 million tons in 2013. On the other hand, the world consumption trend have settled at 38 million tons in 2014. Northern Italian tomato growers and processors have set the raw material base price for this year’s tomato crop at EUR92 per tonne (USD104/tonne), the same rate as last year.