One of South Australia’s (SA) oldest citrus exporters, Riversun Exports, has disbanded, according to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC).
Shareholders in the grower-owned firm last week voted to cease trading under the company’s name. Riversun was originally established as the single desk exporter for growers and packers in SA’s key Riverland citrus growing region, following the announcement of US market access in the 1990’s.
Favourable exchange rates and a relative lack of rival Southern Hemisphere suppliers during an annual gap in US production saw the company prosper around the turn of the millennium.
Riversun chairman Peter Walker said the US market had become less attractive to the Australian citrus industry over recent times, with growers and exporters paying increased attention to markets in nearby Asia.
“When it (the Australia – US exchange rate) was A$1.05, it became very hard for exporters to justify sending fruit to the United States,” Walker told the ABC. “Now that it's in the 80s (A$0.80) it's a lucrative market again, but we do have significant competition in the last few years in Chile. They're sending over 4m boxes into that market which, at the bottom end of the market, still erodes the top end of the market we try to supply.”
Despite its demise, Walker said Riversun had served its purpose, with a number of the individual businesses involved in the company now equipped to carry out export programmes themselves.
“It was put together to supply a large volume of fruit to a short window in the United States, that being three months,' he said. 'Effectively no exporter in Australia could supply the US at that time, so we needed to have a co-ordinated response. Everybody had a part of it, our dollar was in the 60s (A$0.60). It was good times.”
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