The Australian summer citrus campaign in North America is running smoothly according to DNE World Fruit Sales, which took delivery of its first consignment of Navel oranges in early July.
“We’re three weeks into the season and everything is looking good so far,” said national sales director Stu Monaghan. “The fruit is a little larger than last year peaking on size 56, but movement has been generally good, in spite of some stocks of California fruit still lingering in the supply channels.”
Mr Monaghan said that DNE has retail promotions scheduled for Australian Navels starting in August and running through September. DNE will also be promoting Minneola tangelos starting in mid-August.
“We’ll be going up against Peru at that point,” said Mr Monaghan. “But the reports are that the quality and colour of the Minneolas this year are especially good and we think that our fruit can more than hold its own against Peru.”
Because of some unusually cool weather at the time of harvest, imported volume of Daisy mandarins are expected to be off somewhat from original estimates.
“The initial forecast was for imports of approximately 80,000 cartons this season, but we’ve backed that off to between 50,000 to 60,000 cartons due to the cold weather,” said Mr Monaghan.
DNE is importing all Australian citrus through Long Beach this season and consolidating fruit at Del Norte Cooling in Oxnard, California to assist customers in controlling freight costs.
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