The South African citrus industry will kick of its 2012 campaign in the UK and Europe this month with a bumper crop back in the orchards and the need to urgently rethink its strategies for soft citrus.
A recent EU ruling will force exporters and their retail customers to label their soft citrus more clearly in three categories - namely satsumas, clementines and mandarins.
The ruling came after EU officials clamped down on the labelling of Nadorcott mandarins as clementines, a move that initially caused some disruption with Spanish exports to the UK. Spanish products have now been given dispensation until the end of the European season, but the South Africans, and other southern hemisphere suppliers, will have to comply from the start of the season.
Spanish authorities have issued a clarification of the legal requirements to comply with the EU Marketing Directive (Council Regulation EC 1234/2007 and Implementing Regulation 543/2011) which sets out marketing standards for citrus fruit and other products. Labels must accurately display either clementine, mandarin or satsuma, or the actual hybrid.
In accordance with the EU marketing standard for citrus fruit hybrids of mandarins - products such as Nadorcott - must be labelled either as the hybrid ‘Nadorcott’ or as mandarins, and cannot be labelled, packed or sold as either clementines or satsumas. Nadorcott mandarins out of South Africa are mostly sold under the label clementines or as ClemenGold, for which special quality standards have been agreed and which has become very popular with British consumers. “We believe this is a unique opportunity to take the ClemenGold brand to a new level,” says Michelle Kruger, CEO of the ClemenGold Company.
“We are in discussion with British retailers and it would be ideal if they would list our product only as ClemenGold in future, without having to add the word ‘mandarin’ as well. The past few years have shown that ClemenGold has the potential to dominate the mandarin category in future.”
The problem is that most British retailers have only three soft citrus category lines, namely satsuma, clementine and mandarin. Clementine is by far a higher price category than mandarin and South African exporters fear that they will suffer a loss in price if Nadorcott cannot be sold under the clementine category and PLU anymore.
South African sources have warned that the latest ruling may also harm the late mandarin category. “The product ‘mandarin’ normally refers to pitted varieties which have the perception of a lower quality product in consumers’ minds. We all know that what has more recently been referred to as ‘late mandarins’ are completely different products from the old mandarins,” says one exporter.
While this debate will have to be settled before the first South African shipments of Nadorcott, Mor and Orri in June, the South African citrus season is underway. Total shipments are expected to be in the region of 103 million cartons, which will present exporters and marketers with a challenging task, especially after last year’s difficulties. Tough markets, and sometimes wrong decisions, together combined to make it a most difficult season.
South African citrus exporters to the UK and Europe will follow an extremely tough table grape and stonefruit marketing season. “We have no illusions that it will be a tough season,” says Jaco Burger of Market Demand Fruits, a company specialising in the soft citrus business. “We did have excellent growing conditions this year and believe that the fruit we will offer this year will be very good.”
The early South African season will be dominated by satsumas, a product which is expected to do much better this year compared with last season. South Africa is expected to ship some 1.9 million cartons of satsumas this year, which will be 14 per cent more than last year when poor climatic conditions in the Eastern Cape growing regions resulted in condition problems. The bulk of this volume will head for the UK and Europe.
In the Eastern Cape, which produces a major part of the satsuma crop, growers are reported to be reducing their satsuma crop. “We now have only a small crop because growers have been pulling out trees or have been working satsuma trees over to navels or late mandarins,” says Hannes de Waal of SRCC.
The clementine harvest is also expected to start within two weeks and volumes are estimated to increase slightly from 2.5m to 2.6m cartons. According to the South African Citrus Marketing Forum forecast, mandarin volumes will increase by 15 per cent and will reach 3.1m cartons. Of these volumes the Nova variety will represent one million; late mandarins, including ClemenGold, 1.7m; and other mandarin varieties will total 350,000 cartons.
Red varieties are now dominating the South African grapefruit offer, to the extent that it will this year represent 81 per cent of total shipments. Only some 1.7m cartons of white grapefruit will be exported out of a total of 14.3m cartons.
Citrus growers have been concerned about the decline in grapefruit consumption in recent years. This is one of the reasons why grapefruit growers from South Africa have embarked on promotional campaigns in the UK and Japan, two major markets for this category.
Citrus Growers’ Association spokesman Justin Chadwick blames what he calls the trend towards ‘instant gratification’. “It explains to a certain extent why consumption of grapefruit has been on the decline in most, if not all markets. Instant gratification does not mean slicing a fruit in half, cutting around the edge of the pith, and using a spoon to extract the grapefruit pieces while sitting at a table and then having to clean up all the paraphernalia used. We are going to have to come up with a novel way of consuming our product.”
The total South African lemon export crop will exceed 11m cartons and is slightly higher than last year. However, the early pick of the lemon season will be lower than last year, while the late season harvest is still expected to increase considerably.
It brings new perspective if one remembers that Navels and Valencia-type oranges make up around 70 per cent of the total South African crop.
The real season will therefore only start much later and South African citrus growers are renowned for their strong performance in the second half of the season. Both Navels and Valencias will be up on last year. Navels will increase by eight per cent to 22 million cartons and Valencias by four per cent to 46 million cartons. -
No comments yet