The price gap between good and bad quality fruit has grown on the Chinese grape market this year, according to major importer Golden Wing Mau, and lower class fruit is finding it hard to make headway in the market.
As Chilean grape imports started to get into the meat of the season last week, it has become apparent the market is not seeing prices as high as last year, according to Golden Wing Mau’s import manager Rod Hill. Despite that, good quality is attracting an increased premium.
Hill told Asiafruit prices for large-berried sweet green grapes had increased 10-15 per cent this year, but grapes with small or yellow berries were not fetching good prices. The situation has been similar for black grapes.
“Black seedless continues to grow in importance, `but` it has resulted in a lot of marginal-quality reddish fruit arriving, which is difficult to sell at good prices,” said Hill. “But dark black good-condition fruit continually gets the highest prices in the market.”
Crimson Seedless has also been getting high prices on the market, but Chile has had difficulty supplying fruit with enough colour.
Jason Bosch of Origin Direct Asia, another key importer, told Asiafruit that a large percentage of the Chilean grape arrivals were not making the grade for the China market, which has very stringent quality requirements.
'At the moment, the market is dominated by Chilean grapes but unfortunately most of the fruit is not of the desired specification for China,' he said. 'The sizing is mostly too small and there are some condition problems on the arrivals so supplies of good-quality fruit will earn satisfactory returns while other product will not.'
Chilean grape volumes have been more spread out than last year, with importers keen to avoid the heavy mid-season peak in volumes seen in 2011 and Red Globe starting early in January. Chilean fruit has been generally hitting the Chinese market two weeks earlier this season.
Peruvian Red Globes, meanwhile, entered the market in big volumes early in the season. “The early market was dominated by Peru with big fruit, but `with` a lot of green cap this year eventually prices dropped,” said Hill.
While price differences between first and second grade product have increased, the more even volumes this season have spread out the supply-related peaks and troughs in the price.
“I don’t think we will see the high prices like last year in April, but perhaps a better average price when we get to the mid to late season,” Hill predicted.
