Tasmania’s cherry season is in full swing with about a week left of peak production, and picking is going well with prices tracking closely with the same time last year.
Heavy rain late last week spurred concerns in local media about damage to the cherry crop, but growers tell Fruitnet.com the impact has been limited.
“The growers are all picking and packing and exporting still,” said Lucy Gregg of peak body Fruit Growers Tasmania. “There were one or two days of problems, and some growers had some damage, but from the overall industry perspective it’s full steam ahead.”
Tasmania’s cherry season is running slightly later this year as a result of cooler weather, and the harvest is running across the top of peak production this week. Early regions will finish picking in about one week.
“It’s all go now – we’ve got 350 people in the orchard, 200 in the packing shed, and we’re exporting to 30 countries,” Tim Reid of major grower-packer-exporter Reid Fruits told Fruitnet.com.
“The export price is around the same as last year, despite the `high` value of the dollar. The domestic market has been a bit more difficult; there’s been lot of mainland fruit having around because of the later season and overlapping with Tasmania.”
Two relatively new markets for Tasmanian cherries are performing well this year. As part of the protocol agreed in February 2010, a South Korea quarantine officer is currently touring cherry orchards in Tasmania this week before heading home on Friday.
“There are good commercial volumes of cherries going there this season,” said Ms Gregg.
Japan is also looking like a winner for the state’s Sato Nishiki cherries this season following a pre-Christmas promotion run by Cherry Isle, the collaborative marketing enterprise representing Reid Fruits, Top Qual and Hansen Orchards.
Australian world champion and Olympic gold medallist swimmer Ian Thorpe was in Japan in December to promote the Japanese variety cherries grown in Tasmania by Reid Fruits.
“It `the promotion` went very, very well. The market is bigger than Ben-Hur up there now,” said Mr Reid. “The biggest challenge is getting enough Japanese `Sato Nishiki` cherries to supply them.”
The promotion aimed to boost sales of the variety in Japan by 50 per cent to around 60 tonnes.
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