As South Africa's 2025 pomegranate season is about to start later in December, one of the leading exporter of this fruit from South Africa, Star South, has taken a different approach to re-imagine the entire value chain. In this second article on the topic (read the first one here), Jaco Rheeder, Managing Director of the Wellington based Star South who personally oversees their pomegranate programme, explains how they aim to sell the whole bin of pomegranates to make it more profitable for growers.
Detailed market segmentation leads to improved profitability for growers
"Normally during harvest fruit is sorted in the orchards where small fruit, excessive sunburn and fruit with open cracks, the ones where the arils are visible, are classed out as orchard waste, which normally goes for juicing, an extremely low income line for the grower. Although necessary to reduce nett weight packing cost by reducing pack house waste to less than 7%, this pre-sorting process dramatically reduces the marketable orchard yield with a noteworthy financial impact on growers," explains Rheeder.
He says research is very important to understand each geographical sales region in terms of quality requirements and price points. "For example a retail customer in the main street has different ideas about external fruit quality than the one in an oriental street market," Rheeder continues. "So by understanding our end customers we are able to supply just the right product and it is this detailed market segmentation that allows us to sell up to 95% of each bin of fruit that is delivered to us at a very competitive return for our growers."
He says that by developing bespoke marketing strategies they are able to focus their efforts, "to supply the right quality product to the right market at the right price ultimately maximising nett farming income of our growers." For example, they co-operated with clients and created a new sales category for small fruit. "Even on fruit weighing 160–220 grams we now have a Class 1 for export as well as Class 1 for the South African domestic market. Traction in the market is created by using innovative packaging. Feedback from UK retailers was very positive towards this category. Our customers are very excited, because there are very few companies who focus on it, that's why we have a dedicated team for this. We regularly do development work with frequent trials. We made a lot of progress. Our fruit in the UK market is very important as it has to last until September because during that time from July to September there are no pomegranates available if you did not store it. The secret is pre-pack fruit," shares Rheeder.
Cultivar development next steps
"The next step is to focus on pomegranate cultivar development. Herskowitz is not the most loved abroad, it is too acidic and contains too much tannin for most markets, but because it's early they take it. Acco, is not ideal either because it does not tolerate the three-week journey to overseas markets that well. We work closely with our counterparts in Turkey to look at an early cultivar, which is similar to Wonderful, that's not available in South Africa yet. This new cultivar will reduce our reliance on the current two earlier ones. The aim of this development is to see if we can reach the market with good product two weeks earlier than Wonderful," notes Rheeder.
He says India and China are the biggest growers of pomegranates, followed by Iran and Turkey. "In the sphere we operate, Turkey is very important. We work with them a lot. They finish their stored fruit in March, while our first arrivals are in early March, our last fruit is available until September, when they come in again. We complement each other very well. We're looking for something that is early in market, travels well and is good to eat too of course. We store fruit on this side, our late shipments only go out in July – we release the fruit as our customers need it."
Rheeder concludes by saying as exporter Start South is involved every step of the way in South Africa's pomegranate value chain. "We must help the growers to farm for the final customer's needs and be profitable at the same time and that is why we focus on end-to-end agriculture and everything in-between."
For more information:
Jaco Rheeder
Star South
Tel: +27 (0) 21 864 3655
[email protected]
www.starsouth.co.za