South Africa’s export categories of citrus are expected to be down this year due to climatic conditions in production regions.
SA Citrus Growers Association CEO, Justin Chadwick, reporting in his recent weekly newsletter said the shortfall estimates show that navel orange exports will decline by 500,000 15kg cartons to reach an estimate of 24.8 million 15kg cartons, while grapefruit will drop by 100,000 cartons to 14.3 million cartons.
Initially it was estimated that the Valencia crop would be higher than last year but it, too, has since been decreased by 1.4 million cartons to settle on the current export estimate of just over 53 million 15kg cartons.
Mandarins, on the other hand, is projected to see a small increase of 200,000 cartons, the result of recent buoyant soft citrus expansion, but late mandarins were also affected by hail in November.
Overall exports are down two million cartons.
