As the harvest of Summerfuit in Australia comes to an end, Montague has turned its attention to the upcoming apple harvest, and the market is looking fair, according to Rowan Little, General Manager of the company, which procures and distributes both crops. “With stonefruit it’s fair to say we had an abundant crop, which probably led to somewhat depressed pricing,” he tells Fresh Plaza. “Overall people had a pretty good yield, but then a lot more went to export and that was really useful.”
When it comes to export activity, Montague is busy developing markets for “The Montague Tree” and “CROC EGG” brands in Asia, and had a successful run of special packaging for Chinese New Year. Promotions were run in supermarkets in Malaysia and Thailand and customers responded well to the chance to taste different varieties, according to Gavin Wylie, Marketing Manager for Montague.
“With apples we’ve had an extraordinarily kind growing season in Australia, we haven’t had the acute heat we reasonably would have expected. We’re thinking we’ll have a very good crop.” As with any harvest, the question will be one of supply versus demand, Mr Little notes.
There have been positives and negatives for Australian apple growers to contend with, including a lower Australian dollar, and competition from a large crop of apples out of Washington in the United States. “We’re coming off a deflated international market because of the crop they’ve had in Washington and Russia closing in Europe,” says Mr Little. Both those issues will have an impact on pricing when the apples are sold in the international market. “While the market’s probably a little more robust in apples, I would still expect some pressure on pricing in the commodity varieties” adds Mr Little.
As to the varieties of apples that will do well this year, Mr Little says that there will be around 10% more Australian grown Jazz™ apples available. 2014 was a reasonably short season for Jazz™ will sales finishing in July. “This year we hope to go a little longer and we’re hoping to have fruit of even better quality.”
There is a period of consolidation happening at the moment for Montague overall, according to Mr Little, and a few projects are ‘on the go’ but not yet ready to be announced. “We’ve done a lot of plantings in recent years, so we’re really just allowing that to come to fruition.”
For more information
Gavin Wylie
Montague
Phone: +61411750628
E-mail: gavin.wylie@montague.com.au
Website: www.montaguefresh.com.au