Chile will again increase its apple exports in the 2003/04 season, with volumes expected to top 36.5 million cases, a nine per cent increase on last season when 33.5m cases were exported. Pear volumes, on the other hand, are projected to experience a modest fall to 7.5m boxes, compared to the 7.6m boxes exported in 2002/03.
The upbeat apple deal is a further reflection of the industry’s successful transition from red apple varieties to more consumer-friendly bicolored varieties, and its investment in state-of-the-art growing and packing technologies. The World Apple Report in 2003 determined that Chile’s apple industry was the most competitive in the world.
The switch in emphasis from Red Delicious to Royal Gala has been well documented and Chileans are convinced that their Royal Gala is demonstrably better than that of their southern hemisphere producer counterparts. Returns are expected to increase this season too, as a favourable exchange rate adds value to the quality ticket.
Early demand in mainland Europe was a little slower than expected. The reduction in northern hemisphere volumes saw the redirection of a lot of southern hemisphere fruit to Europe, and while it can hardly be described as a battleground, the market tightened up. In the UK, however, the relationship with Chile has grown stronger by the year in recent times, and once the season begins the flow is steady and - as far as is ever possible - predictable.
Andrew Wallace, executive director of San Clemente, certainly thinks the season will pan out well. “March and April will be difficult, but once the excess of fruit has cleared from the European market, the rest of the season will be extremely good,” he says.
Empire World Trade deals with a wide range of Chilean topfruit and reports that the quality of first sendings has been fantastic. “All the crops look good,” says trader Ed Mowbray, “the eating quality is better than last year and the produce has achieved good colour levels.”
Harvesting of pink apples has just started for Hart Worldwide. “There should be quite a large crop which will be higher than predicted,” says the company’s Toby Hart, “but in terms of quality, pink apples are notoriously hard to judge before they are harvested. It is only once they have been packed that it is possible to tell.”
The changing nature of Chile’s apple deal is well reflected in the work of Ams Traders SA, a family-owned business based in Curico, which expects to export more than 700,000 cases of apples this season. “We have been slowly eliminating most of our red apples in the last 10 years, “says Pedro Santa Maria, son of owner Manuel Santa Maria. “We began our switch to Royal Gala nearly 15 years ago, and then six years ago we started planting the Pink Lady variety. We expect to harvest more than 250,000 boxes of Royal Gala this season, and 50,000 boxes of Pink Lady.”
This year’s apple crop is ideal in terms of quality and volume, says Santa Maria, adding that apple plantations are much more dense now than when his father first began planting. “There used to be 600 trees per hectare but today it is about 1,000 per hectare,” he says. “And the larger trees we used to know are now all replaced with much smaller and easier to harvest trees.”
Hart Worldwide has been taking Chilean topfruit for the last four years. “It is mainly young trees that are coming on stream at present,” says Hart, “and in terms of production growers are on a fairly steep learning curve. Overall it is looking as though it will be a good season. There was a slight delay in pink apples and Braeburn because the weather wasn’t conducive to good colouration, but Granny Smith came in slightly early. Although there was a bit of hail in the growing season there was nothing that has had an adverse affect in terms of climatic conditions.”
Empire World Trade has enjoyed an exclusive agreement for the last 10 years with suppliers Frusan and CYD. “The agreement we have allows them to focus on our customers in the UK market,” says managing director Richard Lowes, “and has enabled us to adopt protocols from our customers, particularly in terms of pesticide standards and ethical issues”.
Frusan has three main growing areas - the first to come on stream is San Fernando, in the north of Chile, followed by Angol and Temuco in the South. “The South is very good for Braeburn,” says Lowes, “and we are anticipating greater volumes than last year. If it comes through with the same quality as earlier fruit then we are in for a good season. Both eating and cosmetic quality are high on the list of the UK’s demands and we do all we can to find the best producers in the best growing regions, to produce superior varieties and to store and ship them correctly.”
Felipe Espinoza is another producer in the apple-rich Curico growing area. “The apple harvest this season looks very good,” he says. “Water has been plentiful and so the sizes should be good. It is not easy to predict how large the harvest will be, because there are so many new bicolored orchards in production. The red apples, of course, used to be our strong suit in Chile. But that has all changed now since so many new bicolored orchards have started to produce.”
This trend towards bicolored apples has been confirmed in the studies of Decofrut, a Santiago-based provider of services and analysis for the fresh fruit industry. According to its recent report Royal Gala production in Chile has grown steadily in the past four seasons from 7.4m cases in 2000/01 to a projected 10.5m cases this season. Fuji and Braeburn production is also up sharply in this four-season period, while Pink Lady production has sky-rocketed from 247,000 boxes in 2000/01 to a projected 1.7m boxes this season. Volumes of red apples, by contrast, have declined in each of the past three seasons.
Chile’s bicolored apple varieties are absorbed mostly by the North American and European markets, where export volumes have grown sharply in the past three seasons: from 3.5m cases to 5.3m cases in North America, and from 9.4-12.1m cases in Europe.
Traditional red varieties are shipped primarily to markets in Latin America, where the amount of apples received in the past three seasons has remained steady at about 10m cases.
Chile’s pear deal, however, is sputtering, with volumes in the past three seasons holding steady between seven and eight million cases. The decline in pear production, Decofrut says, is attributable not only to the poor spring weather in 2003, but also to growers who are seeking to replace their pear orchards with more profitable fruit varieties.
“Expectations are for a decent pear crop,” says Hart. “We do deal with Packhams but Chile tends to get larger pears than we need, so we tend to source more from South Africa.”
How Chile’s apple and pears sales will fare this season in world markets is open to question. Factors bearing on the final results include production levels from competing southern hemisphere countries and the amount of apples held over, or in stock, at destination markets. Early season exports from Chile of other fruit varieties have favoured the European market, where the strong euro promises optimal returns, but it remains to be seen if apple exporters will follow suit.
Competition should not be so strong this year from neighbouring Argentina, where the apple harvest is projected to fall by 10 to 15 per cent because of the combined effects of bad weather and codling moth (Cydiapomonela) infestation.
Still, the apple harvests from two other important southern hemisphere producers - New Zealand and Brazil - are expected to be strong, and compensate for the lower volumes coming from Argentina.
Overall, says Hart, Chile benefits from excellent growing conditions. There is a large distance from North to South that enables producers to grow a lot of different varieties. In addition to this the logistical gap is shortening. “A couple of years ago we were looking at 28 days shipping but as output gets greater, faster vessels are being used and we are now looking at just 21 days.”
Due to the problems with avian bird flu there is currently a shortage of shipping containers because of additional supplies of chicken coming from Brazil so a lot of produce is being shipped in open-hatch vessels, says Lowes. “We’ve got fruit coming in at Bristol and Sheerness and are expecting more fruit this season than last. I think that this year Chilean fruit might really have the edge.”
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