Storms have battered mango crops across the Northern Territory and northern Queensland, prompting a revised forecast for this season’s national crop.
Total Austrlian production is now tipped to hit 7.2m trays, according to a report from ABC Rural, down 800,000 trays on initial estimates.
The key Bowen-Burdekin growing region in Queensland appears to have been amongst the areas hardest hit by the weather events, loosing around 300,000 trays in late spring storms.
Peter Le Feuvre, a grower in the Bowen-Burdekin area, said some producers had lost over 80 per cent of their crops, with the impacts set to be felt throughout the local community.
“It looked like someone had just shaken the trees and the mangoes all fell on the ground,” Le Feuvre told ABC Rural. 'It's going to have a flow-on effect to the rest of the community because we won't need as many packers in the shed and the pickers won't make as much money, there won't be as much freight.”
Despite the setback, exports from the region got underway in late November, with 10 tonnes of locally-grown mangoes on the first cargo flight out of Toowoomba to Hong Kong.
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