As the last containers of Chilean cherries are still arriving by ship over the next few weeks the season is being hailed as excellent by exporters. This is despite a slower start mainly due to rain, which was partly offset by a later Chinese New Year. "The Chilean cherry export season ended very well. It was an exceptionally good season and we are very happy and pleasantly surprised with the development of the season so far," says Sebastian Garcia, Commercial/Sales Manager from Cope Frut in Chile.
Chile reached about 410,000 tons this season, very close to the 407,000 in the Chilean Cherry Committee final estimation. "There are still some last containers arriving this week for us and maybe some more during the next few weeks from other companies. We at Copefrut reached 28,600 tons," says Garcia.
He says while it sounds very good, there are growers who had losses due to the early rain. "Chile as a whole recovered, unfortunately there will still be some growers that were affected and may not be able to cover their losses in volume with the higher prices. Hopefully, they will be able to make up in the next season."
Garcia describes the relationship between Chile and China as special, with the climate and lunar calendar of China somehow aligning to often provide ideal circumstances for trading. "We have a very special relationship in between the Chinese New Year and the Chilean Cherry season. Given that the Chinese New Year follows the moon calendar it moves forward or backwards every year, and that is closely related to the season timing, i.e. when the Chinese New Year is late, the season is late, when the Chinese New Year is early, then the cherry season is early... we couldn't have planned better for it!"
He says this season had very distinct sales periods. "This season we lived four distinct sales periods: One, the early season up until mid-late December, which was characterized by very high prices and low volume. Two, January, which was dominated by almost perfect quality Lapins which maintained prices at higher levels. Three, Pre-CNY-sales during the last days of January and first days of February: crazy times... huge volumes were sold and distributed everywhere in China, very good quality fruit allowed the containers to move fast and kept the movement going. Four, after CNY sales. These are also crazy times with almost no fruit left on the market and very few vessel arrivals the demand continued on a high level, which we are still seeing now. This will be one of the best seasons we have had for cherries since Covid," concludes Garcia.
For more information:
Sebastian Garcia
Cope Frut
Tel: +56 9 6898 2495
Email: [email protected]
www.copefrut.com