This year, after an abundance of rainfall, one of the plants is 3 feet tall and so I would like to remove the others around that tree and relocate them, to allow the largest one space to grow. Besides the three foot plant, most are about 2 feet tall. Before I try removing the surrounding trees, I'd like to have an idea of how far to space them for optimal growth.

Could relocation increase growth rate or do loquat plants in general (I don't know the specific variety I have) need a long time to establish themselves?

They do seem to be slower growing and slower to fruit than his mangoes or his papayas. Hope this helps.

Now that one of the plants is growing, I've realized that I need to do something with the other ones. Someone told me in the past to space them, but since they were so so small, I figured I didn't need to do it right away. But now that one of them is getting large, I feel more inclined to do what I could have done before. I also have a fig tree, which produces fruit and it was quite slow growing at the beginning, but is finally picking up and growing more in height and width. That plant isn't surrounded by any others and I had been comparing it to the loquat trees and wondering if they are similar in that they seem to be slow to grow/produce fruit.