The South African avocado industry hasn’t yet seen the final protocol that would finally allow their avocados into China, but they’re raring to go.
Potential exporting farms and packhouses have supplied their details to the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development whose minister, Thoko Didiza, yesterday signed the agreement with Wang Yi, China's Minister of Foreign Affairs on the sidelines of the fifteenth BRICS summit. BRICS is a bloc composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
China's minister for foreign affairs Wang Yi and South Africa's agriculture minister Thoko Didiza yesterday at the 15th BRICS summit (photo: Government Communication and Information Service)
A decade of waiting for avo access into China
“I certainly do hope it still happens this season,” says Clive Garrett, ZZ2 marketing manager and past chairperson of the South African Avocado Growers' Association.
“Our avocado season starts late February and runs through to end September. Any time in that window. The good time for us is when the big volumes come from Peru which would probably be June, July, August.”
South Africa is ideally placed to service the Indo-Pacific region of the world and in terms of shipping times to China, South Africa is
a minimum of ten days quicker than Peru, notes a joint press released by grower ZZ2, their exporter Core Fruit and Mission Produce South Africa.
"ZZ2, Core Fruit and Mission Produce Southern Africa are ideally placed to take advantage of the opening of the Chinese market. ZZ2 has made substantial investments into a state-of-the art modern avocado packhouse and into an avocado nursery that can produce in excess of 300,000 trees on both clonal and seeding rootstocks.
Core Fruit has the experience and know-how in terms of logistics in exporting fruit (apples, pears and citrus) to China," it states.
"Mission Produce Southern Africa is also extremely well-placed regarding Mission Produce Inc’s global distribution network and particularly its partner in China, Mr Avocado which has ripening and
distribution facilities in China."
Peruvian domination in Europe has held SA back
Minister Didiza called it an immense opportunity for South Africa where avocado hectares now exceed 18,000 hectares, with the potential, industry says, of tripling that.
According to the companies' statement, the avocado industry has the opportunity to greatly expand its plantings.
"Up until now, due to the oversupply of avocados into Europe mainly by Peru, the South African avocado industry has been reluctant to grow its production base due to a lack of market options."
China would probably take mainly Hass, but one never knows, Clive remarks. “Initially Europe only wanted Hass, now they’re starting to take greenskins.”
Access to China for South African avocados was over ten years in the making. Back in 2018, late avocado pioneer Dr André Ernst told FreshPlaza that South African avocados were in urgent need of an "escape route” from its overreliance on Europe.