Summer is typically a low season for imported fruit in China when, other than US cherries, citrus from South Africa and Australia are the key products.
Citrus imports from these Southern Hemisphere countries are expected to rise this season, thanks to increased interest from Chinese importers, according to Kurt Huang of importer Fruitease. “Sales will depend on quality,” he says. “As long as the quality is stable, I think a 10-20 per cent volume increase will not impact the pricing.”
Supafresh’s Heidi Zhang echoes this view. “The Australian orange season has just started, and so far the market is good,” she says speaking in early July. “We haven’t seen many South African oranges yet, since the peak season will start in late July.”
Zhang is anxious for an improvement on the Northern Hemisphere citrus deal, which she says was a “disaster”: Spanish and Egyptian oranges flooded the market at a time when China was enjoying bumper volumes of domestic citrus.
Avocado imports have performed better, however. Zhang says prices in the months leading up to July were “quite good”, but were starting to fall in July because Peru was loading more than 50 containers per week.
Supafresh is nonetheless still looking forward to September, when New Zealand avocados make their Chinese market debut.
“New Zealand avocados now have access, and the first import season will start from September,” says Zhang. “Everybody is talking about it. It will be interesting to see how consumers receive them.”
