Fruit Attraction in Madrid has become the most important fruit trade show for South African grape exporters, coming as it does well in advance of the start of the season, providing plenty of opportunity for pre-season planning, says Anton Viljoen (right), managing director of the table grape enterprise that since its start in the late 1960s, has expanded to 2.8 million export cartons a year throughout a campaign running for six months.
“Europe and the UK remain very important for the South African table grape industry, receiving around 75% of the country’s table grapes,” Anton notes, “and we’re excited about the season ahead. This is our third year at Fruit Attraction where we will have our own stand.”
There are several factors in their favour, not least an additional crane for Cape Town harbour which will facilitate the loading of three vessels simultaneously and signals an improvement on productivity at the harbour during the past season. The arrival of the crane has been eagerly awaited by the grape industry which has been hamstrung by delays and logistical challenges over the past two seasons.
The highly anticipated crane from Durban arriving at Cape Town Harbour where all three berths will now be fully operational
“The grape market might be running short on grapes during the early part of our season, as volumes in the USA and Europe could end earlier. An emptier market creates good opportunity for us in Europe and the UK and draw away some of Peru’s volumes to the US,” he says.
“South Africa could also be exporting slightly lower grape volumes which will assist with the overfull logistics chain,” he continues, “The area of table grapes in South Africa’s early northern summer rainfall grape-growing area has decreased by around 500ha as growers have been looking at other commodities to replace table grapes or planning to replace with promising new early varieties.”
Also, a number of varieties will no longer be exported by South Africa but either sold on the local market or dried as raisins (an option that has become more attractive over the past couple of years).
In the Orange River region, where ASV Farms also have production units, the season might be early; in about a month’s time South Africa will release its first table grape estimate for the 2022/2023 campaign.
In the Hex River Valley, where ASV Farms have nine grape farms, the late varieties are now putting forth buds.
While winter rain wasn’t quite as much as they would’ve liked (although their farms are not experiencing water shortages) winter cold was excellent, which improves the uniformity of berry ripening.
Anton says that Fruit Attraction provides an excellent opportunity to finalise supermarket programmes with European and UK receivers and talk about packaging requirements. They’ve seen a shift away from heat seal punnets, not only as a result of labour shortages in Europe, but also because of cost: heat seal punnets are around €1.40 more expensive than clamshell punnets, and packaging material need to be ordered and imported ahead of the season.
Visit ASVFarms at 6B08E at Fruit Attraction Madrid.
For more information:
Anton Viljoen
ASV Farms
Tel: +27 23 354 8713
Email: anton@asvfarms.co.za
https://asvfarms.co.za/