A swift end to the California citrus season is set to produce gaps in the navel orange and clementine markets in North America for the first few weeks of the Southern Hemisphere summer citrus import season, according to local pundits.
“The California navel deal is winding down very quickly,” Tom Wollenman, of Lo Bue Bros., a leading California citrus shipper, told Americafruit.
“It’s been extremely dry over the last several months in the San Joaquin Valley and a lot of fruit never got packed due to sizing issues. Consequently, there are very few of the retail-friendly sizes – 56s, 72s and 88s – available at this point. I expect our deal to be finished with navels by the end of June.”
Since none of the major navel-growing regions in the Southern Hemisphere are expected to have significant volume until well into July, importers are anticipating a very strong navel and clementine market for the first several weeks of the summer.
“We’re scheduled to receive only a couple of containers of navels during the third week of June and the first bulk vessel isn’t due until 6 July,” explained Tom Cowan, South Africa sales manager for DNE World Fruit Sales.
“It’s looking increasingly like there will be a bit of a gap for navels in North America from late June through the middle of July,” Cowan concluded.
According to Miles Fraser-Jones of AMC Direct there will also likely be a very strong market for clementines in North America at the start of the import season because of California’s early finish.
“Peru will try to fill the void from mid-May through June but they have limited volume,” he predicted.
“Chile will have fruit – but smaller sizes since they produce for volume […] and Chile’s clementine deal is running a couple of weeks late because of the drought in the north of the country.”
South Africa, meanwhile, will have set programmes in the US for mandarins but Fraser-Jones noted that most of the crop will be sent to the European Union because of better marketing conditions.
The full report will be published in the June/July edition of Americafruit.
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