Chilean cherries are an established favourite on the Chinese market for New Year, but this year is set to present a significant challenge for exporters due to damaging weather and the festival’s early 2014 date.
While Chilean growers have been making efforts to ramp up production, severe frosts have cut expected crop yields in half, with the early varieties the worst affected.
“There has been a relative shortage of early cherry varieties for airfreight,” said Rod Hill, general import manager at Golden Wing Mau. “But with the volumes expected to be similar for China this year it could put more pressure on the market ahead of Chinese New Year.”
Managing director of Origin Direct Asia, Jason Bosch, believes the fruit shortage has the potential to play havoc with pricing this season. “Demand on the cherries are always really high, but this season is going to be interesting as suppliers are pushing prices up due to the early fruit that was lost as a result of the frost,” he said. “However, increased volumes coming into production are replacing the lost volumes so there does not seem to be a shortage of fruit arriving. Some caution will need to be aired to ensure that prices do not get pushed unrealistically high because it is said that this year will see more volumes arriving than last year and not less.”
Indeed, Chilean efforts to escalate cherry production means that exports are likely to be similar to last year’s 8m cartons, according to Hill. Roger Liu from Northwest Cherry Growers believes that quality is key to their performance on the Chinese market.
“If they are top quality, you can see cherries at a very good price,” he said. “Otherwise, you will lose a lot of money due to the poor quality. The poor quality cherries simply will not sell, even if the price is very low.”
Liu, who has played a key role in organising US cherry promotions in-store, online and via television commercials, feels that current supply levels have not yet risen to meet local demand.
For cherry exporters with produce to supply, Hill advises that they will need to have produce en route to China by the 51st week of this year. “This presents an enormous logistics operation,” he said. “It will be a bit frantic getting the expected volume to China in time.”
