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Simon Langworthy - Speyton Fresh

"This year the season started well but as volumes increased the prices came back"

Tasmanian cherry and apple grower Spreyton Fresh finished their cherry harvest last week, the last cherries have been packed, while some still have to be processed for juice and used in cooking.

"Our harvest started in mid-December and ran through until the 21 Jan," said Simon Langworthy, Director at Spreyton Fresh. "The season started 3-4 days later than normal but caught up once we got going with our main variety of Lapins."

Spreyton Fresh grows around 12 hectares of cherries with 80% of the area covered to protect from birds and rain. The production area is Spreyton on the North West coast of Tasmania, it is an area that has traditionally been for apple growing but in the last couple of decades, cherries have become a major part of the business. The main varieties are Lapin and Simone with some Van as well as some early varieties.

"We have had a disappointing season for fruit size, we normally produce larger firm fruit but with a cool and wet early part of the summer with cold overnight temps of 4-8 degrees C fruit growth early was slow. The fruit's average size was 30mm, unlike previous seasons where it averaged 32 mm. The brix level has been between 17 – 22 with some as high as 27 and some as low as 15. Fruit quality has been ok but not as good as previous seasons."

Simon said that the Australian domestic market is becoming increasingly difficult to supply with large volumes of fruit from Victoria and New South Wales filling the domestic space, causing an oversupply in Melbourne and Sydney markets.

"We have a window early in the season pre-Christmas for large fruit to achieve great results, but once the mainland fruit fills the market post-Christmas it becomes more difficult unless there is a major rain or weather event in some of the growing regions. We export the majority of our fruit to Hong Kong with smaller amounts going to Malaysia, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam. We are looking for export partners in mainland China and the other Asian countries."

"This year the season started well but as volumes increased the prices came back. Our timing for CNY this season was slightly later than we would normally be, given the later start to our season and difficulty in sourcing labor for picking caused the harvest to go longer than we would have liked by 3-4 days."

Speyton Fresh doesn't do any special packaging for CNY but the best fruit goes out in 1 kg gift boxes.

For more information:
Simon Langworthy
Speyton Fresh
simon@spreytonfresh.com.au
www.spreytonfresh.com.au