Manbulloo is happy with its yields this mango season, which will finish this week, despite facing "almost every challenge" weather wise.
The company has farms in the Northern Territory and North Queensland, and CEO Marie Piccone says she is proud of how her staff stood up to a mix of storms, heatwaves, flooding and fires - adding that it ended up having little impact on yield, and packout overall was fine.
"We have had every challenge in the book thrown us," she said. "Every location has had plenty of stuff to deal with. So, it has been climatically and physically difficult, but everyone has worked through each challenge as it happened. Yields were not down. The challenges were keeping fires out of orchards, keeping water up to orchards in heatwaves. We managed to do that, although we did lose some fruit to scalding, as it was so hot. We were getting storms and belting hot weather. The heat was also affecting our pack house and field harvesting equipment. We had temperatures of 41-42 degrees for 10 to 12 days."
Although, there were some regions where packouts were down due to flooding, and cyclone damage, but overall Manbulloo had a "medium to heavy year", with generally high quality. Ms Piccone is also pleased with how demand has grown for Australian Manbulloo Kensington Pride and R2E2 mangoes, both domestically and in export markets such as the United States, Canada and Korea.
"The U.S market continues to 'open up' with more retailers starting to take our product and the penetration there gets higher," Ms Piccone said. "There are other markets that we might look to in future but we tend to focus on markets that we are committed to and we believe are going to be long term and profitable. If we try to establish and service too many markets, we don't do them as well as we would like. So, we are primarily focused on North America and parts of Asia."
Japan has re-opened and Manbulloo says it will start to supply the country from next season, while Korea continues to grow as a key export destination - and the company’s fruit featured again at the annual Australia Day function in Seoul.
"It was incredibly popular again," Ms Piccone said. "The chefs used some of our frozen products and made desserts. The attendees loved the fresh samples at the Australia Day event too. Koreans certainly love our mangoes and demand is showing that. The Free Trade Agreement and continuing reductions in the tariff certainly help the product to be at a price point that many Koreans want to spend their money on."
The harvest season for Manbulloo started on 20 September in the Northern Territory, and will finish March 1 on Queensland's Atherton Tablelands. Ms Piccone says she is pleased with how domestic demand is growing, as the company's partnership with supermarket Coles strengthens. The Manbulloo Australian brand is making significant in-roads internationally as well.
"The reason that we are getting growth in our export market, and the Australian market, is because consumers are 'blown away' by the flavour and the eating experience with Kensington Pride," she said. "They are also impressed by the physical beauty, size and flavour of R2E2. There are many consumers who also love the large fruit with the pink-red blush. So, we are quite pleased. We really believe that these unique varieties are the reason that consumers around the world are willing to pay a premium for our mangoes. All the feedback during in-store promotions and consumer research says consumers comment so often that they have never experienced mangoes like these."
She adds that one of the secrets to happy mango consumers is leaving the fruit on the trees longer.
"There are a lot of R2E2 mangoes harvested in Australia that don't have full flavour," Ms Piccone said. "That's a shame because if you leave an R2E2 on the tree until it is mature, then the flavour is creamy, lush and delicious."
For more information:
Marie Piccone
Manbulloo Ltd
Phone: + 61 8 8972 2590
reception@manbulloo.com
www.manbulloo.com