Chile’s clementine exporters, watchful of South Africa’s presence in the European arena, are welcoming the recently opened US market with plans to send 10 to 30 per cent of their harvest to North America.
“We want to be especially cautious in the European market because our fruit goes head-to-head with clementines coming from South Africa,” says Miguel Allamand, chief executive at Subsole (Santiago), a leading Chilean clementine export firm. “This coming season we expect there will be very strong demand for our clementines in the early part of the season in Asia.
“And US demand will be especially strong in April and May, before most of the US summer fruit is harvested and markets get saturated with domestic fruit. So it is good to have a more diversified market for our fruit.”
Other leading clementine firms in Chile share Allamand’s caution about the European market.
“Last year was difficult for our clementines,” explains Emilio Saavedra, trade manager with Agricom, based in Santiago. “We began well in Japan in 2004, and continued doing well into Europe. But things got very complicated in the UK because our fruit arrived while there was still South African fruit in the market.
“As a result, we want to develop the US market and have found a lot of interest from clients. Still, this first year, we don’t expect to send really large volumes, something on the order of 20 to 30 per cent of our harvest.
Herman Illanes, trade director for Europe and the Far East at Unifrutti Traders in Santiago, adds that a weak dollar/euro conversion rate is also a disincentive for many of Chile’s clementine exporters.
“It looked like it was going to be a really good season for us in the EU market, but at the end of the day, after the conversion into dollars, our net returns were just about normal,” Illanes says.
All three companies agree that the growing season for this year’s clementine harvest was optimal, with “lots of sun and no rain” in the northern part of the country where much of the clementine orchards are grown. The industry is predicting that volumes will be slightly higher in 2005 than they were in 2004.
“It is hard to get a good figure on the volumes of clementines exported from Chile, because they go out in a variety of different sized boxes, anywhere from 2.5 kilo boxes to 15 kilo boxes,” explains Illanes.
“But if you used a 10 kilo box as an average, I’d put the country’s total export volumes at between 1.3 and 1.5 million cases in 2004. And my estimate is that volumes for my company will be up by five to nine per cent.
“Fortunately, all the fruit exported by Unifrutti comes from the northern part of Chile, so it doesn’t run the same risks of clementines produced in the Central Valley, where there can be rainfall in autumn and winter months.”
Chile’s fresh fruit exporters are keen to see the relatively new citrus export deal prosper.
The nation’s traditional fruit harvests - table grapes, apples, kiwifruit and stonefruit - normally end by March or April.
The country’s citrus fruits, by comparison, are picked, packed and exported from April through to September each season, thus providing a very comfortable, cost effective complement to the “normal” work-year of the nation’s fresh fruit export industry.
Markets, thus far, are very specialised, with lemon production going mostly to Japan, and clementine production to Europe, Asia and now the United States.
“It is just good business sense to make use of this tremendous infrastructure we have created here in Chile the year round, and a successful citrus deal will help pave the way,” says Allamand.
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