Mehadrin Tnuport Export (MTEX), Israel’s leading citrus producer, marketed its Jaffa Suntina fruit earlier than last season. The fruit arrived in UK retail outlets on December 22 and is still available in-store now.
Peak volumes of Jaffa Suntina will run from mid-January to mid-February with final volumes expected to last until the end of February. This year a total of 240,000 cartons will be shipped to the UK and sold through the MTEX UK office. This represents a 10 per cent increase on volumes last year. Overall MTEX accounts for more than 80 per cent of all Suntina produced in Israel.
“Jaffa Suntina is a variety that delivers outstanding eating characteristics and is the first of our easy peel varieties,” says Dov Warmen, managing director of MTEX UK. “The Jaffa Suntina along with the Jaffa OR and Jaffa Mor represent an important part of our strategy of growing volumes of high quality, easy peel varieties available for the post Christmas period.”
Jaffa Suntina characteristically has a very deep orange skin, high juice content and a high sugar to acid ratio giving a distinctive and strong flavour. The majority of UK retailers will be selling the fruit as a premium easy peel line.
The varieties Suntina, Or and Mor now form the backbone of MTEX’s strategy for easy peel citrus. All these varieties have excellent taste characteristics, are virtually seedless and replace some of the traditional post-Christmas varieties such as Topaz. Heavy plantings in recent years will mean that commercial quantities are set to increase over the coming years.
“In recent years the easy peel category has grown significantly particularly outside of the traditional pre-Christmas Spanish season,” says Warmen. “We have responded to this demand by developing these varieties and with new plantings. Over the next few years we will have significantly higher volumes to market between January and April.”
Since the summer of 2002, MTEX has been supplying Jaffa-branded citrus lines throughout the year. By working in conjunction with selected growers in South Africa, South America, Spain and Turkey Jaffa citrus fruits, traditionally seasonal lines, are now available in the UK year round.
The Israeli Jaffa citrus will still be available in the UK from January to June for oranges; October to June for grapefruit and December to the end of April for easy peel citrus. This new worldwide citrus network has allowed the Jaffa brand to be available to UK customers year round.
The owner of the Jaffa brand name, Citrus Marketing Board of Israel’s (CMBI) has signed an agreement with MTEX to export Jaffa branded citrus from selected worldwide growers according to the protocol of the Jaffa standards.
Warmen says: “This was a historic landmark for Jaffa within the UK and represents part of comprehensive plans to maximise the inherent value and heritage of this most respected brand. Two years on, this development has proved a fantastic success for customers, retailers and our selected growers worldwide.
Jaffa grapefruit continues to fill an important window.” This year Jaffa grapefruit arrived into an extremely short market with South African fruit finishing very early,” says Warmen. “The initial demand for our early fruit outstripped expectations. We have an established window where we supply early fruit at the beginning of October and stored fruit right through to the beginning of June.
“Demand for Jaffa Sunrise now outstrips demand for our traditional Jaffa white grapefruit and most of our unique Jaffa Sweetie variety is now sent to the Far East where it is extremely popular.”
Jaffa grapefruit is sold in most of the major UK retailers in both a loose and pre-pack format. The early fruit is grown in the Bet Shan valley in Israel where high temperatures produce some of the earliest grapefruit in the northern hemisphere.
Warmen adds: “The fruit this year is of particularly good eating quality with lower than normal levels of acidity. The fruit is slightly smaller this season and we will have lower volumes of larger sized fruit”.
MTEX crop forecasts for this season are that total production of white grapefruit will be similar to last season at 30,000 tonnes however production of red grapefruit is anticipated to be 20 per cent lower than last year’s 40,000t.
“Although we anticipate production volumes of red grapefruit to be approximately 20 per cent down on last year our exports to the UK will be held at similar volumes to last year,” Warmen concludes.
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