KSY Juice Blends v Citrosuco: quantifying damages where the defendant refused to take delivery

The London Circuit Commercial Court has handed down its remitted judgement in KSY Juice Blends UK Limited v Citrosuco GmbH [2026] EWHC 764 (Comm), resolving outstanding issues of quantum following a successful Court of Appeal challenge to the original findings on contractual enforceability.

The underlying dispute concerned a 2018 contract for the supply of orange juice pulp wash (Wesos) over three years. After the Court of Appeal held in May 2025 that the contract was enforceable — implying a term that price would be fixed at a reasonable or market rate in the absence of agreement — His Honour Judge Pearce was tasked with determining the consequential losses flowing from Citrosuco's refusal to accept delivery.

Establishing the measure of loss

The court reaffirmed that the applicable measure was the contract price less avoided costs of performance. Given the earlier finding that KSY had no realistic prospect of reselling the Wesos on a spot market, there was no deduction for failure to mitigate. The primary question became how those avoided costs should be assessed where the claimant's own evidence was incomplete.

HHJ Pearce accepted the general principle from McGregor on Damages that a claimant bears the burden of proving its loss, and that failure to adduce available evidence may be fatal or at least invite a cautious approach. However, he declined to treat evidential gaps as entirely fatal, applying the fair wind principle articulated by Leggatt J in Yam Seng Pte Ltd v International Trade Corporation [2013] EWHC 111. Where uncertainty arises from the defendant's own wrongdoing, the court will resolve it by making reasonable assumptions, if anything erring in favour of the claimant.

Reasonable or market price for Wesos

The volume of Wesos to be delivered — and therefore the quantum of avoided costs — depended on the reasonable or market price for the product, which determined the contractual Free Trucks mechanism. The defendant argued for 50% of the FCOJ market price; the claimant for 70%. The judge preferred 70%, the figure adopted by the defendant's own expert as a baseline, finding no sufficient evidential basis to reduce it further despite the absence of a ready spot market.

On Brix level, the court found 57 Brix on the available invoice and certificate evidence, rather than the lower end of the 55–58 range advanced by the defendant.

Treatment of individual cost heads

Procurement costs were assessed at the reasonable price of Wesos for those quantities the claimant would have had to source externally. The judge rejected any uplift based on the claimant's production costings, finding it illogical to assume KSY would have manufactured Wesos at a cost exceeding market price when open market purchase was available.

Packaging costs were allowed at US$60/MT — a midpoint of the defendant's expert's range — on the basis that drumming costs were a contractual obligation not embedded in the FCOJ-derived price.

No deduction was made for storage costs. The court reasoned that such costs were inherently hypothetical, causally attributable to the defendant's breach, and no more within the claimant's knowledge than the defendant's.

Transport costs were allowed at US$150/MT, the claimant's figure. HHJ Pearce declined to accept that sea freight from Brazil was necessarily cheaper than overland transport from Greece at equivalent per-tonne rates.

An import duty deduction of 12.2% of the contract price was also allowed, representing costs the claimant would have borne to achieve delivery on DDP terms.

Interest

Despite the claimant's failure to plead interest under CPR 16.4(2), the court declined to disallow it entirely, holding that the interests of justice required an award. Rate was fixed at 1% above base rate, the court finding no evidential foundation — and no pleaded basis — to depart from that starting point.

The total damages award was €2,848,480 in contract price, less combined deductions of €1,764,578 across both years, with interest to be calculated by the parties.

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