The mushroom industry is reaching a cliff-edge again due to the decreasing gap in value between sterling and euro, Gerry Reilly of Reilly Mushrooms has said.

On Tuesday morning the euro was trading just shy of £0.93, with analysts and commentators suggesting that the two currencies will reach parity.

Speaking on RTE Radio recently, Reilly, whose company is based in Co Westmeath said all mushrooms are sold in sterling, generally in forward-contracts.

“Before the Brexit vote these contracts would have reflected an exchange rate of around 72p, but in the week after the vote there was 20% taken from the exchange rate.

“Because we are a high-volume low-margin business, selling a fresh perishable product with just a few days shelf life, we suddenly found ourselves having to honour contracts with prices where we were losing money on a daily basis.

“Sadly during those following months, several of our growers went out of business which meant losing nearly 200 of the 3,000 jobs in the sector and almost €10m in exports.”

Sterling decline

Reilly said that it was the suddenness of the decline in sterling that hit growers.

“It’s difficult to know where we’re going in the future. We just about survived. With sterling reaching almost parity, the industry is reaching a cliff-edge again.

“It’s important to understand how important the Irish mushroom industry is.

“As a nation, we produce 90,000t of fresh mushrooms per annum, 9% of all the fresh mushrooms produced in the EU, enough for 32m people.”

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