Stone fruit exports looking good despite cold spell

Although there has been a cold wet spell in the Western Cape – one of the main sources of SA export fruit – the stone fruit industry is not too disturbed as yet. It’s early times to make any firm predictions, according to Capespan technical adviser Michiel Bester, but his indicators point to a fairly normal season ahead. For plums it’s definitely too early to say much about the main crop – which only starts harvesting in December and January – because they have only just flowered, and it’ll be about another month before the fruit is formed and judgement can be made. “But the first few early cultivars look promising,” Bester told FTW, “because the fruit had formed before the cold, wet spell began.” As for apricots, Bester suggested that it looks like a normal crop at this stage. Peaches in the Western Cape also look like they will yield a better crop than normal. And, although Bester is not directly familiar with the Gauteng crop – which has already started harvesting early because of the heatwave in that area of the country – he felt that everything again looked normal. The nectarine crop has taken a bit of a battering from hail in the Cape – and their thin skins make them more susceptible to bruising than the other stone fruits – but Bester is again relatively optimistic. “It happened early,” he said, “so a lot of farmers will be able to skim off the damaged fruit and should get a normal crop. Also, in the last couple of seasons, a lot of extra nectarines have been planted, so the overall volumes should still increase.” The main problem for SA stone fruit exports, Bester added, is that they’re all a week later than last year. “That always has an adverse effect,” he said, “because we want to get our exports into the overseas markets at higher prices before Christmas. But losing that week will cost us quite a bit of volume.” Bester hedged away from making any predictions about export prices in the overseas markets, which will only become known once orders start to flow in for this year’s crop.