Cloudberry pickers earn record prices in Lapland

Cloudberry pickers in Finnish Lapland have been paid up to €20 per kilogram this week, according to Yle, as demand and local competition drive prices to exceptional highs.

Prices typically range around €10 per kilogram in good years, but this season has seen a sharp rise. On Wednesday, the price at Ranua market reached about €20 per kilogram, said Raisa Wegelius, coordinator of the Hillaviikko (Cloudberry Week) project in Ranua. In Kuusamo, buyers have paid €15 per kilogram at a purchasing point operated by Dalle Valle Oy since Sunday. By Thursday, prices at Juha Kukkonen’s purchasing point in Ranua had settled at €15 per kilogram.

Kukkonen attributed the high prices to strong demand and local competition during the Cloudberry Week event. He noted that most pickers are Finnish, with only a few from Ukraine or other countries selling berries at the market. Retail prices for cloudberries at the market have reached €24–26 per kilogram, with most of his purchases going to companies in southern Finland. Direct sales to customers at the market account for only a small part of the trade.

The cloudberry crop this year has been of good quality, though pollination conditions were weaker in northern Finland and Lapland, according to the Natural Resources Institute Finland. Early in the season, more berries were found in forested areas than in open bogs. Kukkonen expects the main harvest to continue possibly into early next week.