Chinese citrus company Asian Citrus Holdings has announced the closure of its Hunan orchard.
The orchard was established in 2007, with around 1.05m orange trees and more than 750,000 grapefruit trees planted at the site in southern China.
Operations at the Hunan plantation will cease as of the end of May, said Asian Citrus Holdings in a statement released 18 May. The group expects impairment losses of around Rmb1.352m, which will impact the group’s financial statement for the year ending 30 June 2016.
Asian Citrus Holdings cited poor harvest volumes and quality for its decision to shut down the orchard, with frost impacting the 2016 orange harvest and no grapefruit expected to be harvested before winter 2017.
“In view of the continued poor harvest conditions in Hunan Plantation, the board has been increasingly concerned about the ability of Hunan Plantation to achieve an effective yield and acceptable quality for commercial production,” the group said.
The decision was made following a crop analysis undertaken by China’s Citrus Research Institute, which found that Asian Citrus Holdings could either improve management practices at the Hunan orchard and improve fertiliser application to improve yields, or look to plant other fruit more suitable to growing in the region.
After reviewing the options, Asian Citrus Holdings said that considering the time and costs of the proposals and the uncertainty of the outcomes, the board found that the “economic costs outweigh the potential benefits of further investment in Hunan Plantation at this time”.
