"South Africa: "Farming with grapes is a sprint, citrus is a marathon."

Schoonbee Landgoed is a citrus and table grape farm in the Senwes region of South Africa, where lemons and navels are currently packed. Gert Upton, marketing manager, is excited about the prospects of the season and in particular about the colour development of their citrus.

The farm has 300ha of table grapes, with plans of another 70ha over the next two years, and 900ha citrus, the latter originally planted to provide year-round employment for its large workforce. 

The citrus component of the enterprise has become more lucrative over the years, with roughly 70% or more destined for export. It produces 1.5 million export cartons yearly, roughly equally divided across lemons, soft citrus, navels and Valencias.

“This area is unique for its Turkey Valencias as well as our Cara Caras and navels, which have a deep orange colour. By week 24 we already have a lot of cold which gives us a nice, deep colour. The colour has developed very well over the past four weeks and with the temperatures below 10°C of the weekend before last, one can clearly see that the colour is much deeper. Now the Cara Caras are orange, not yellow. The Far East likes orange fruit, so we can pack two shades – orange for the Far East and more yellow citrus for the Middle East.” He quips: “You don’t buy a yellow, you buy an orange.”

Orri mandarins also excel in this region; with two to three weeks to go before harvest, brix levels are already at 11.5. It develops quicker than the farm’s Nadorcotts. There is more wind damage on navels from the north this year, which will probably reduce the amount of class 1 navels for export.

The company explores all available marketing options: it handles the export of 15 to 20% of its harvest to the EU and the Far East but also makes use of exporters with strategic partners and established retailer programmes in those same markets (particularly the EU and the UK). Its citrus is marketed under its own name in 38 countries. Domestically, some go to fresh produce markets (where its export quality packaging stands out) and direct marketing to South African supermarkets, some of whom demand class 1 quality. 

“We pack the fruit as it comes over the packing line and it is marketed on-hand, so you always have to know what’s coming over the packing line. We’re far from the market, 85% of the product that we export, must be destined for a specific market. However, there must be an element of suppleness in the marketing plan.” 

“Deciding where to send our fruit is a dance throughout the season.”

He emphasises the importance of developing a farm’s brand, even when not marketing under its own name. “A farm’s PUC [production unit code] has become critically important. Your PUC becomes a brand within a brand. At the wholesale markets in the Far East they open the pallets to look at the PUC on the carton and when they see deep orange fruit, the price can easily go up with RMB50 or RMB100.” He continues: “You can’t just be a producer anymore. Quality is how you distinguish yourself in a full market.”

The farm enjoys the advantage of operating in a citrus black spot-free zone. The citrus pest has never occurred on the farm, nor on the neighbouring farms, and they’re working hard to keep it that way. “Once you get it, it’s very hard to get rid of it. We have spray programmes against it throughout the season but then it has other consequences – Canada doesn’t like high residue levels and similarly, it makes it more difficult to send to Germany. We have false codling moth, it’s everywhere in South Africa. It’s not so much on the early soft citrus because we would’ve have sprayed intensively by the time they’re picked but with later varieties, when we’ve had to stop spraying in terms of the withholding periods, there can be incidences. Orchard sanitation is the number 1 weapon but we train the packhouse staff to keep their eyes open for the prick marks, we run the packing lines slowly, and certain orchards are flagged as high incidence orchards.”

“The opening of the US market for Argentinian lemons seems to me a positive development but if they can be allowed, why not us? If the USA and China could get the same kind of protocol, it would create stability in the market. They’re both countries with a large middle class that can take good product. Now you market all your high-end product to China and the rest to the EU and the UK, but lemon production is going to increase and if you haven’t already established a foothold in a market, you could find yourself competing with everyone else on wholesale markets. Argentina has a golden opportunity.”

Regarding Russia’s labelling requirements, Upton says that the process retards the packing process tremendously and packing has to be planned longer in advance to prepare the labels and any difference between the label and the shipping documents is grounds for a quality claim on the Russian side. He speculates that Russia might have to relax its measures this year in the face of shortages on certain citrus.

Table grape growers in the Senwes region open the South African grape season, first with white grapes, then red, then black, at about the same time as Aussenkehr in Namibia. “This gives us a responsibility towards the rest of the grape industry, because the opening determines how the rest of the season progresses. You can’t just flood the market, like happened in 2014 with white grapes from Namibia. You have to make sure the price levels are right so as not to adversely affect the producers who follow after you. It’s part of corporate governance.”

He calls this past table grape season ‘disastrous’: “The last three or four months were bitterly difficult for the industry, as the US ran out of capacity to handle grapes from Chile and their grapes were diverted to the European market, where we were, coupled then also with Indian grapes. Also, we struggled with quality problems because of the rain and the weather… Many grape growers received prices far under production costs, many will have to pay in.”

He continues: “It was actually a good year to gauge the markets, to see which is best, retail or wholesale. Some important questions have to be asked from the viewpoint of a producer: who is your best partner? Farmers carry all of the input costs but they’re the last to receive their money.”

Schoonbee Landgoed harvests grapes from week 44 until weeks 4 or 5; while citrus runs over 6 months. “You know what they say: farming with grapes is a sprint and citrus is a marathon.”

For more information:

Gert Upton

Tel: +27 13 262 4000

Email: marketing@schoonbee.co.za