A major Queensland papaya producer is helping to drive campaigns to grow the popularity of the fruit among Australian consumers.
The Skybury plantation is based near Mareeba, north of Cairns in Far North Queensland, and General Manager Candy MacLaughlin says that while demand for papaya is growing, the key is finding a way for it to grow faster.
"It is on the increase, but we are conscious that overall only a small percentage of Aussies eat papaya," she said. "So that is our biggest challenge; to let people know about this fantastic fruit. The fact that it is versatile, nutritious and it can be used in salads, smoothies, for breakfast, snack and in curries. It is available all year-round, so it should be a staple food, rather than a sometimes food."
It is one of many research and development projects underway on the farm to try and improve how the fruit is transported, reducing waste, increase the shelf life and improve the taste. Skybury has a dedicated team on-site, carrying out these studies.
"We are working on getting more people to eat papaya, and understand when it is ripe to eat," Ms MacLaughlin said. "We let it ripen to a degree on the tree then because it is such a delicate fruit, we need to work on getting it to fully ripen when it is almost in the consumer's bowl, rather than in transit. At the moment the work is in the lab, and it might take a year or two before we see the results of the research being done. The best thing we can do is educate consumers regarding appearance and why it has marks on the skin. Getting them to understand the product will increase sales."
Skybury Papaya was a finalist in the 2018 Delicious Produce awards in the "From the Land" category, and Ms MacLaughlin adds that a number of promotional tools can be used to spread the message, from social media to advertising and in-store promotions and meet the grower events. With the product being a year-round product, Ms MacLaughlin admits it does pose some challenges, in terms of seasonal marketing, it also poses some positives.
"We shouldn't see it as a challenge, but rather as opportunity," she said. "For example, when the mangoes come into season, there is talk that we are going to see more price pressure and sell less fruit. My take is why not piggy-back off them and sell them as 'tropical twins'? Really, papayas and mangoes are. Papayas are subtle in flavour, so mangoes will dominate, but papayas can bulk up the meal. They can complement each other. It is just the nature of the industry, you are going to have seasonality pressure, but look for the positive spins and get it into the consumers heads."
The company is running on 450 acres at the moment, with 400 currently in production and another 50 that are due to be planted by July. Each week, over 100,000 kilos of papaya is produced, with hopes of doubling that when full production comes into effect. Ms MacLaughlin admits there were some challenges in terms of the weather over the summer period, but was pleased at how the staff and the crop were able to cope.
"We are on track, despite the wet season," she said. "The plants have come through that and have maintained their health. We are just looking forward to the season that lies ahead. We have had the best wet season of the past 10 years, where it just rains for days on end. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight, and you wonder how everything held up. But what we noticed was all the land prep that we had done in the last couple of years, meant that the paddocks held up better than they have in the past. We had a slight dip in production, because they don't get the sunshine. Despite that, our staff were amazing, picked for weeks on end and kept their humour about them."
Papayas are a year-round fruit, but change in size based on the weather conditions. Skybury grows a red variety, and supplies all of the markets on Australia's east coast.
"It (the Skybury red variety) is unique to us, so we have a line that only we have got, which gives us a unique flavour profile," Ms MacLaughlin said. "We send to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. We feed into all the distribution centres along the east coast, and that covers the supermarkets; Coles, Woolworths and Aldi, as well as the independents as well."
Skybury was established around 30 years ago, and was originally a coffee plantation. Papaya production has taken over as primary focus for the company, but Ms McLaughlin says the two crops co-exist perfectly on the farm.
"We found the need for a cash crop, or a regular income, which papaya gives farmers, as 52 weeks of the year we are picking and packing," she said. "As we have gone along, we have worked out that coffee and papaya work really well together, and we have gone to the next step where we interplant now. So, they share the same row in a paddock and have a great symbiotic relationship; papaya is a fast growing that has a short life span (2 years commercially), and then if you plant coffee and papaya at the same time, the coffee trees have shade for two years. We are sharing the same paddock, the same soil, the same irrigation, the same infrastructure and it doesn't more than 20% additional water or fertilizer."
Skybury also offers an onsite cafe and offers on-farm visits, selling a range of value-add products, including papaya jam, papaya chutneys, picked papaya and dried papaya.
For more information
Candy MacLaughlin
Skybury
Phone:+61 7 4093 2194
info@skybury.com.au
www.skybury.com.au