The area planted with seasonal tomatoes for the 2019 season is around 18,000 ha, and about 1,500 ha of late tomatoes, up from 13,870 ha in 2018.
For an average yield of the order of 62 to 65 T/ha, the quantities available for processing, for all purposes and taking account of the quantities intended for market of fresh product, would exceed 900 thousand tonnes.
For the production of Double Tomato Concentrate, it is thus expected that the processing campaign will involve more than 800 thousand T of fresh tomatoes to produce about 120 thousand T of double tomato concentrate.
The processing campaign started in June 21st in some units that obtain their supplies from the central regions, such as Kairouan and Gafsa in particular, where the area planted with this crop is 2550 and 1300 ha respectively, against 1450 and 750ha, the previous campaign.
By this date, the majority of the processing units have gone back into production and supplies of fresh tomatoes from other production regions have already started: Sidi Bouzid, Cap-Bon, Zaghouan and Mannouba, as well as supplies from the North-West regions.
Extensions in processing capacity have been made in few factories, which will make it possible to shorten the waiting times for fresh tomatoes to be received during the peak periods of the harvest.
