“There are certain brands where you just trust the box,” explained Cobus van Graan of Fruit One. “Where, no matter what varietal is in the box, you know there is going to be a certain quality. But what we're going to do with the Tango is promote the variety brand.” That involves being one of the few companies that will market the variety, in order to keep some exclusivity. Since not everyone will have it, Cobus expects to gain a share of the European marketplace that is looking for a new mandarin that has many favorable attributes.
“We’ve already planted in excess of 150 hectares of Tango with more establishment in the pipeline for the next 3 years. We're looking to secure a few hundred hectares of production for the Tango, and we're extremely excited about that,” said Cobus. “The fruit really looks good, and we think it will do exceptionally well because it's a good late-variety, seedless mandarin.” Speaking more generally, he noted that it's a good time to be in the fresh produce industry in South Africa. While drought and hail have brought significant challenges, he believes that the production and varietal innovation currently seen is what makes things so exciting. Though there are still significant hurdles to expansion.
“I think the biggest limiting factor is security of and access to water,” said Cobus. “There are substantial areas of high-potential, arrable land. But the water allocation has to be secured and water storage needs to increase in order to plant more long-term crops.” At the moment, demand for lemons is immense, and growers are trying to devote as much land as possible to growing lemons. But those kinds of crops require large amounts of water, and that's not available in many parts of the country. Whatever the solution, Cobus believes a positive reworking of the situation would result in a huge expansion of production for popular crops.
Other obstacles are more short term, like the drought that's plagued growers this past year. The biggest effect on marketing citrus this year will be in that there will be smaller fruit. But, with South Africa being such a big global exporter of citrus, Cobus believes buyers will simply make do with there being fewer large sizes available. Though, in the case of Russia, which generally like bigger fruit, the problem is resolved in the sense that the precarious financial situation there makes it less likely exporters would have gone to that market in the first place.Hail has also cut into citrus production. About 25 percent of Fruit One's citrus supplies were destroyed by hail, and that's meant less exportable fruit for the company's clients. That will mean some channels will be short supplied and that will impact the bottom line. But Cobus noted that, while everyone is in this business to make money, there are effects that go beyond financial returns, and those are things the company also cares about deeply.
“In the Hoedspruit area alone about three million cartons of citrus were lost to hail, and this will impact negatively on the surrounding community and industry stakeholders for years to come,” he noted. “If we don't get rain soon then we'll have another drought for the 2017 season, and that will impact business as well. But these things take money out of people's pockets because this business is so labor intensive. The businesses will go on, but communities will feel this for years to come.”
Those concerns are in line with the core tenets of the company. Production areas are organized such that community partners have partial ownership of the farms they work on, and FruitOne takes a hands-on approach to working with those communities. The company exports 2.5 million cartons of citrus every year that's grown on over 2,000 hectares, but with all of that going on, one of the chief concerns remains to develop the people the company works with.
“There's a social consciousness aspect as well,” said Cobus. “We want to reinvest in people as we grow.”
For more information:
Cobus van Graan
FruitOne South Africa
Email: cobus@fruitone.com
Mobile: +27 (0) 83 640 5722
Office: +27 (0) 21 8833447