It is simply not easy to answer the question most repeated in Peru over the past few weeks: “What do you know about the North? says Benjamín Cilloniz, General Manager of Exportadora Safco Peru S.A. This is because the effect of heavy rain in March and April this year, coupled with the EL Niño warming effect on the table grape vines is creating great uncertainty and led to this often repeated question.
Autumn Crisp grapes in Ica 6 weeks from harvest.
Peruvian table grape producers have to adopt a wait-and-see approach on how the warmer weather will affect production volumes says Cilloniz.
“About the volumes of this year, Ica is going to increase their volumes as it was expected, mainly in green varieties. As Peru, there are some discussions about the volumes from Piura and Lambayeque in the north of Peru. Because of an unusual rainy weather in March and April of this year, the vines were submitted to some stressful conditions such as a lack of oxygen in the soil and higher pressure of fungus diseases during the regular maturity process of the vines. Since those days we were wondering if that condition would have the same effect of a similar condition that we had in 2017 resulting in a 50% less volume in the north for the 2017-18 season. This time we knew that there were a lot of lessons learned from 2017 and we are dealing with a completely different scenario with the variety distribution in the north. Two weeks ago, Provid, Peru’s table grapes association, released the first estimation for the season and they projected only a 5% of reduction in the north. I say ‘only’ because what we were hearing was more about a 20% but, with no concrete information.”
Cilloniz says it seems that this first report had some critics: ”Because we were asked to send a new forecast of our estimated crop just two days after that report was released. The Provid report have been one of the most accurate predictions in the past and this first report set a number of 72 million boxes for this season. We will have to wait for the following updates and the most important, we must wait for how El Niño is going to develop in the following months. In general terms what we can expect is higher and earlier volumes form Ica and probably shorter volumes from Piura.”
He says the El Niño warmer weather is not entirely bad news since it speeds up production of grapes. This is through earlier bud break with Ica potentially being up to 30 days earlier. It will help them if California’s offer is short. “We are faced with an extraordinary opportunity to put the name of our brands, Ica and hopefully Peru, as the most reliable origin for the table grape industry. I know it could sound like a very smug statement, but I think that Peruvian growers should make an extreme effort to harvest, select, pack, and ship the fruit with the most accurate process that we can, leaving all the stakeholder as happy as they can. We are not sure of what is going to be the exact number for this year, but I know that Peru will be around 80 million boxes in the future, so we must work on it.”
Safco own production set to increase
“It is going to be the first year in which we will only export fruit from our own fields. Managing 1.7 million boxes with 10 varieties, being sure to send the correct fruit to each market with the correct costumer, at the correct timing is not an easy thing. We are increasing our volume with some replacements that we did in the past two years, always growing with Autumn Crisp knowing that we have reach a very well-known brand in the US and Chinese markets,” concludes Cilloniz.
For more information:
Benjamín Cilloniz
Exportadora Safco Peru
Tel: +51 517191126
Email: [email protected]
www.safco.pe