Eight years ago an old ski resort was converted by In2fruit to its single own grape farm: Lac du Soleil, near Piketberg, with 60 hectares of commercial blocks where harvesting started in the first week of January.
While other varieties have so far kept to the calendar, last week Sweet Globe™ tested ready, fourteen days earlier than last year (predominantly earmarked for China), with Sweet Sapphire™ next up.
Right: packing Sweet Celebration™ in the vineyard
“When the grapes are ripe they must get into the box and off the farm, onto the boat to reach the clients as soon as possible,” says Gerhard Olivier, head farm manager.
Everything is weighed and packed in the vineyards, saving on packhouse construction, but in future they plan to erect a small packhouse specifically for mixed punnets (on which one can get a R40 to R50 (2.4 euro) premium, he observes) and for double XL and premium packaging. The rest of the crop will continue to be packed in the vineyard.
It had been a bit of a struggle to get containers the week before, when the farm’s onsite cold store was so full they almost had to stop packing, but the situation improved by the next week. He calls it “a logistics nightmare”, as it has been for the past three years.
One of Lac du Soleil's five forced cooling rooms with capacity to bring 21 pallets down to zero degrees within 14 to 18 hours, depending on packaging and temperature
“Last week we did 50 conventional pallets for Europe, the previous week 60 pallets. It’s a bit more expensive but you get the fruit faster to Europe,” he says, remarking that he knows of Namibian grapes arriving in Cape Town in week 51, and still waiting there.
Plug-in costs at the harbour add up if the booked vessel is delayed (as they all are) or if the stacks don’t open because of wind.
“Farmers get all the flak because the quality of the grapes suffer. If they arrive in 21 days it’s still fine but if it’s 30, 40, 50 days then you must expect issues. Last year to China the longest transit time was 70 days!”
Lac du Soleil's holding room where pallets are stored at 0°C until loaded out to containers or cold trucks (for steri markets like China)
Another alternative to the Cape Town Container Terminal, besides conventional shipping and trucking fruit to ports further afield, is airfreight.
Due to the shortage in red seedless, In2fruit last week flew 42 pallets to Ireland – but it comes with a price tag of around R1.3 million (over 62,000 euros) at US$2 per kilogram.
The aim is using less plastic
Trials with paper bags instead of plastic (six bags to a 4.5kg carton) are promising, even if still more expensive and damaged by moisture.
“The cartons with paper bags are looking quite nice,” Olivier remarks, “and we’re using less plastic. That’s the aim of it.”
He continues: “Most of the market still wants punnets. Some UK retailers want heat-sealed punnets without holes (non-vented), filled with some gas to keep the stems greener and grapes fresher. We do a lot to minimise the amount of plastic we use, for instance most of the 9kg boxes is a naked pack, with only a bin liner but no plastic inner packaging inside. The receiver repacks the grapes on their side, and on our side we pack faster."
Polishing up the portfolio
Sweet Sapphire™ is next up leading to the high mid-season peak which they would ideally, Olivier remarks, like to extend to either side and for that purpose they’re trialling 18 cultivars of which they’ve taken a shine to quite a few, especially season-opening green and red grapes and some mid-season green and red varieties.
They were struggling with colour on Crimson, which they have since removed and replanted with Autumncrisp® and Sweet Globe™. Whereas Crimson delivers around 4,500 cartons per hectare, they routinely take off between 7,000 and 8,000 cartons per hectare, and even beyond, on the new varieties.
An Autumncrisp® vineyard planted at Lac du Soleil in August 2022 took the first prize trophy in the 2023/2024 SATI Young Block Competition earlier this month
"We are very proud of what we have accomplished over the last years with the growth of our young vines."
Sweet Celebration™ yielded as much as 8,500 cartons/ha last year while Adora® showed a tremendous response to their fertigation with close to 12,000 cartons – and over 85% of that double extra large.
Some of the older cultivars like Midnight Beauty, Tawny and Sable are being removed in the region, replaced by new-generation grapes.
They’ve had abnormally high rainfall the past year, over 600mm, Olivier notes, and a far cry from the 137mm they measured for the whole of 2017.
They sunk four boreholes that year but it’s kept as backup: it’s more expensive running a borehole than pumping water from the seasonal Kruismans River during winter to a farm dam.
There’s room – and water – for expansion, plus some trial blocks, leaving some open ground for the antelope, black wildebeest, zebra and ostriches that they’re keeping “just for the beauty of it”.
For more information:
Gerhard Olivier
Lac du Soleil In2fruit
Tel: +27 21 874 1055
Email: [email protected]
https://in2fruit.co.za/lac-du-soleil/