As Australia’s mango season gets underway there is increasing concern one of the country’s largest mango producers, failed managed investment company Rewards Group, will not harvest its crop.
The company’s Ord Valley orchards accounted for around a quarter of Western Australia’s mango production last year, reported the ABC, and this year the harvest is expected to hit 700 tonnes.
After going into receivership in May, concerns have been mounting that the crop will be left to rot, putting a serious dent in available supplies.
“The trees haven’t been looked after, there’s no one to pick them, and it could put a big dint in the volume that’s going to come out of the Ord,” Norm Carroll from the Perth Market Authority told the ABC.
“So unless someone gets organised and picks them...but even then you’ve got to have somewhere to pack them, so it’s not a good situation.”
The crop may be saved, however, by Reward’s former growers. The Rewards Grower Advocacy Group (RGAG), which was established to keep operation of various Rewards projects rolling, plans to make sure the crop is picked.
“We’ve secured the funding for it and the picking will commence in the next couple of weeks,” said RGAG spokesman Mike Butler.
“But we’ve still got some issues with the receivers, they’ve locked up the `Rewards` packing shed, so we don’t have access to that, but we’ve got plans in place to use alternative equipment and alternative packing if need be.”
At A$6m dollars, Reward’s Ord Valley packhouse is Western Australia’s largest, and is capable of handing 1.2m trays of mangoes per season.
Sufficient packing capacity should be available for the Rewards crop elsewhere, predicts Ord Valley Mango Growers Association president Chris Robinson.
“There’s one operator putting in a new machine this year, which should have a reasonable capacity and there is equally two or three other machines in the Valley, which as far as I understand are not being fully utilised,” he told the ABC.
“So if Rewards is expecting a crop of 100,000 trays, I would suspect there’d be the right capacity.”
But assuming the crop is successfully picked and packed, Mr Robinson said there were still concerns about the mangoes being properly marketed.
Without a proper campaign, for which time is running out as the season draws closer, he said there was potential for market upset.
