The South African Valencia and navel focus group yesterday met and decided to further reduce the export estimate by 235,000 15kg cartons.
The Valencia export estimate is now 55,475,000 cartons, down from an estimate of just under 58 million cartons at the start of the season.
Fruit sizing is smaller than initially expected, when excellent weather during blossoming and fruit set as well as good late summer rains in the northern provinces seemed to indicate otherwise.
By the end of week 31 there was a difference of 10 million cartons between the amount of Valencias packed (21.3 million cartons) and those already shipped (11.7 million cartons) as a result of a week of packing lost to the cyber attack on Transnet Port Terminals.
It is expected that navels will end close to the original crop estimate of 26 million 15kg cartons. By the end of week 31, 18.6 million cartons of navels had been shipped.