International Agri-Food Trade, Europe’s Seasonal Import Dependence and Supply Vulnerability: A Unit Value Decomposition Analysis of Fresh Oranges

International agri-food trade and climate change interact in ways that have significant implications for supply chain resilience and food sovereignty, yet these interactions remain insufficiently understood at the level of specific traded commodities. This paper analyses European fresh orange imports over 2012–2022 using a unit value decomposition applied to FAOSTAT and Eurostat bilateral trade data, alongside a seasonal supply analysis of monthly import flows from the main exporting regions. The analysis documents a pronounced geographic reorientation of global orange production toward developing and emerging economies in North Africa, Southern Africa, and South America, many of which face documented climate-related stressors. The unit value decomposition identifies how exporter-level unit values and import share reallocations contribute to changes in regional import unit value indices. The seasonal supply analysis shows that the European orange supply depends on a tight sequence of regional exporters operating in largely non-overlapping seasonal windows, leaving limited redundancy if disruptions occur in any single supplying region. These findings provide a descriptive, origin-disaggregated account of Europe’s trade-side exposure in fresh orange supply chains. They underscore the need for product-specific monitoring tools and policy approaches that consider seasonal import dependence, supplier concentration, and the climate vulnerability of major origin regions, while recognising that the present analysis does not estimate causal climate effects.