The first vessel to transport South African grapefruit to Japan was loaded into the Port of Durban the weekend before, one or two weeks sooner than normal.

“Usually the grapefruit we get would be ripe around the middle of June however this year’s will arrive slightly later,” says an exporter.

Hoedspruit began its harvest of grapefruit earlier. The usual time for harvesting is at Easter time, however this year at the beginning of April, the grapefruit harvest was booming.

At the end of week 14, 1.3 million containers of grapefruit had been packed. Of these, 61% were shipped to European Union, 17% to Asia (32 percentage last year in the YTD) and 15% went to Russia (which reached 3.3% at the time of writing in 2022).

“In Japan the market is completely empty,” an exporter comments. “Normally the fruit would be from Florida as well as California however this year, there’s much less.”

The economist continues to say that, like other countries as well, it is the Japanese economy is in a state of stress. “Its not an explosion, in spite of the fact that there is a shortage of goods and services.”

The grapefruit that has been transported to Europe as well as China remain floating on the sea.