"It looks like we could get two, perhaps three vessels to Europe before 17 December," says Francois Myburgh of Bet-El Fruit. The export company's current focus is supplying European clients with grapes and strawberries. He notes that this period is usually characterized by its strong grape demand, but this year European grapes ended earlier and Peru has constrained container availability.
Early varieties don't take kindly to the steri protocol required for South Africa's grapes to China, and they're generally not large berry varieties, Myburgh explains, so the focus will only move to the East later in the season. In any case, he reasons, Europe is wide open for grapes while cherries still own the markets in the East.
Arriving in Europe by week 50 allows the approximately ten days needed to process the arrivals for the hot pre-Christmas sales period. Depending on available volumes and the regularity (or not) of vessels, he reckons the same bottleneck as last year could develop in week 2 or 3.
Current demand is excellent, especially for red grapes because white's harvest starts first and there are not many red varieties available yet.
Weather deals a difficult hand
The Loskop Valley grape harvest is always a nervous time: unlike the Western Cape, it is in a summer rainfall region and every additional week of harvesting increases the rain risk (so it's problematic when the harvest seems to be starting later than before, as Myburgh anecdotally mentions).
Already farms between Groblersdal and Marble Hall have had substantial rain and hall, resulting in a cautious decision to take no chances with exporting of some early varieties. It's noteworthy, he observes, that in the Loskop Valley some grape growers have removed some of the later top-earning varieties in favor of older traditional such as Red Globe which has always done well for them.
In the Orange River Valley, an early heatwave causing abscission in the vines and frost also reduced export volumes from a region that traditionally grows grapes solely for export. They are far from the country's retail distribution centres and markets - with over-supply from the Northern region, there`s not that luxury or alternative early on.
"The local grape market is going to come under pressure. Around two weeks ago the price was very high per carton and by this week it had almost halved."
The upcoming citrus season will equally reflect the challenging weather phenomena of recent months, starting with the historic freeze of July which put production in some stricken Limpopo orchards on ice (so to speak) for at least two years, and then flowering coincided with extreme heat.
For more information:
Francois Myburgh
Bet-el Fruits
Tel: +27 21 863 3146
Email: [email protected]
https://www.betelfruits.com/