Avocado packing at Koeltehof Packers in Kiepersol, Mpumalanga Province, will end two weeks earlier than usual: it had been a season characterized by quality problems like cercospora spot and vascular browning due to the unusually wet and overcast summer.

It hadn’t been an easy avo season: they were pushing, as they do every year, to ship out before Peru, but this year it was complicated by very high moisture levels. “Then the export volumes weren’t quite what we expected because the quality wasn’t as good as last year,” says Patrick Caetano, packhouse manager. “From our side, the main thing was insect damage, much higher thrips damage compared to normal years. The high rainfall definitely had a big effect.”

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They’re finishing off with Ryan (not a large crop this year) and Lamb Hass, keeping them busy to the end of the month, where usually they can keep going into mid-August. Avocado exports to Europe have slowed down since May; the avocado market is oversupplied at the moment, and Israel’s terrific avocado crop is influencing the price of South Africa’s late avocados.

On the domestic market, prices haven’t gone up much, he notes, but there’s a bit of demand on the local market.

Fortunately, he says, there is a silver lining. “What we’re really looking forward to this year is a big out-of-season crop. Those rains also stimulated late flowering, and there’s a big out-of-season Hass crop and green-skinned, but mainly Hass. Tzaneen has a lot, so do we in the Kiepersol, Nelspruit area. We’ll probably start picking by mid-November, and then we’ll store it in cold rooms and push it into the market as we approach Christmas and New Year.”

Depending on volumes, there could be some out-of-season exports as well. This pasella crop – the last time it happened was in 2019 – is going to have “a huge impact’, he says. “We’re spreading our risk, and instead of importing avocados from Spain and elsewhere, we won’t need to import at all, but instead we’ll use our own local fruit.”

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For more information:
Patrick Caetano
Koeltehof Packers
Email: [email protected] / [email protected]
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