South Africa: Unpredictable plum season

The South African plum season is proving to be an unpredictable and difficult affair, with unexpected overlap between cultivars whose harvests normally run concurrently, a lower volume of plums that is reducing activity at packhouses and consequently an irregular harvest with muted cultivar peaks.

“The challenge this year lies in the difficulty to make reliable estimates,” says Chris Swart of Corefruit. “Every farmer has a different strategy to deal with the drought depending on different areas and on which cultivars perform well or only marginally in their areas, and this makes it really difficult to predict what’s coming. That’s the most difficult thing and that’s why communication with producers is so important.” He notes that clients in the UK and the EU are understanding of the situation in which plum producers and exporters find themselves this year; everyone knows the industry is in its third year of drought.

Volumes are down, no doubt about that, as much as 15% down on the early plums due to heat damage on fruit from areas bordering the arid Klein-Karoo like Robertson, reckons Jan Hoon, marketing manager of Franschhoek Marketing, major plum packer and marketer based in the Boland, but he expects that late plums ought to push volumes back to only a minor decrease of 5%, as estimated by Hortgro by the end of last year.

Packing at various packhouses is currently focusing on the red Fortune, yellow Sunkiss, Lady Red, Souvenir.

The corollary to a hot, dry season is very high sugars, with good holding ability. General consensus is that the quality is looking really good this year. Wind during the early part of the season has left its mark on plums in some areas in the Boland.

Chris Swart describes South African plums’ quality and taste thus far as “very good”, adding that for producers who manage to combine size with the quality of this season’s plums, it will be a very good year indeed.

Sizing affected by drought, despite lateness of season

“The plums are hanging on the trees for a long time, it’s taking a long time to reach the right pressure,” says Wessel Erasmus, packhouse manager at Banhoek Packers in the Boland. Around Stellenbosch in the Boland the heat they would normally have expected by late November already, is only coming now.

“Whereas usually you get larger fruit in a late season, sizing is a bit down this season,” Jan Hoon remarks. “It’s a difficult year but still, we have enough large plums to fulfil commitments.”

Producers have tried to minimise the effect of the drought through thinning out and pruning strategies, which has borne fruit in areas that still have reasonable water reserves like around Stellenbosch where up to 10mm of rain fell over New Year, but in areas almost running on empty and getting temperatures in the high thirties with little respite, a drop in sizing is inevitable.

A larger proportion of fruit tends towards size B than usually, stimulating demand for large plums, explains Corefruit’s Chris Swart. “The pull is strong because of lower availability and plums are selling well, which is one positive of the season, but it’s not favourable for producers because there are fewer fruit and the price per unit isn’t considerably more than last year.”

The UK traditionally takes South Africa’s smaller plums but lower volumes are keeping supply in check.

Apart from the EU and UK, South Africans plums are also going to Russia and the Middle East, the latter a market that needs to be handled carefully lest prices drop sharply in response to oversupply, an exporter tells FreshPlaza. “There are good pockets for plums in the Middle East, but you have to keep them hungry, otherwise prices fall quickly.”

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Chris Swart