The current Florida citrus harvest has been challenged by extreme weather events such as freezing temperatures, cyclones, hail storms and a drought. Production has also been decimated by orchards suffering from citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing). As Florida's citrus harvest will end this month, the significant drop in production will have ripple effects with trading partners around the world.
Citrus Australia chief executive Nathan Hancock said Australian growers were mostly focused on the fresh fruit and fresh juice markets, but the rising global price for orange concentrate was presenting an opportunity. "Usually the concentrate produced in Australia is too expensive for world trade and even some juice makers in Australia don't tend to use Australian concentrate because it's not priced comparatively to the futures market," he said.
"But last year Australia had an excess of oranges for juicing and a lot of it got concentrated, probably at record levels. So there's now a unique opportunity to trade some of that into the world market, or make it competitive for Australian producers to use Australian products."
Source: abc.net.au