Cherries

Chinese fruit importers are working through a staggering volume of Chilean cherries that have been arriving by sea over the past week or so to make the sales cut-off for Chinese New Year, which falls on Monday.

“The market is under a lot of pressure at the moment as a result of the wave of Chilean cherries – the seafreight volumes are arriving thick and fast,” said Jason Bosch of Shanghai-based importer Origin Direct Asia, who noted that average prices have dropped by around 30 per cent in the past week.

“Last week, sales were still pretty good, with average prices exceeding Yn300 (US$47.50) per box, but there was rain over the weekend in both Guangzhou and Shanghai which slowed down sales and caused bit of a stock build-up,” he said. “Prices this week are around the low Yn200s, which is about US$10 below the required return levels and there’s a lot with weaker quality selling for below Yn200 (US$31-32).”

Peter Li of Chinese import-export company Hengfeng told Asiafruit the selling price of Chilean cherries was the lowest in recent years, but that it had bottomed out and wouldn’t sink any lower. While prices varied according to quality, he said that fruit was selling within a range of US$28-36 per 5kg carton.

As of the middle of last week, Chilean cherry shipments to Hong Kong and China had reached around 7.9m cartons in the season to date, according to industry figures. That’s a massive increase on the 4.4m cartons sent in the same period of last year. With pre-Chinese New Year sales almost complete, Bosch said he did not expect a vast amount more fruit. “It looks like we’ll get to a total of around 9m cartons for Hong Kong/China,” he added.

Cherries have well and truly taken centre stage in China's import market for Chinese New Year, and the influx of arrivals has also put pressure on sales of other products, such as grapes from South Africa, Peru and Chile, said Bosch. “Fortunately, there still aren't huge volumes of grapes,” he added. “South African volumes to the Asian market are down on last year and Peruvian volumes are a little limited. Chilean grape volumes are fortunately not here in any quantity yet.”

Li said that overall fruit import prices were 'okay' considering the large volumes entering the market. Peruvian grape arrivals had ramped up, he noted, with product selling for between US$28 and US$44 per 8.2kg carton depending on quality.

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