The local honey pomelo season in China has been underway for nearly three months. Although the taste of this season’s crops is less than ideal due to adverse weather, production areas have ushered in a good harvest and the export volume has increased slightly compared with last year.
“Our growing center is located in Heping County, Fujian Province. The honey pomelo season here starts in August and lasts through to the end of January each year. Apart from the lack of rain, weather conditions in Fujian have generally been good this year and production areas have ushered in a good harvest. A large proportion of the harvest is comprised of large sizes. However, due to the lack of rain, fruit harvested in the later season has bitter flesh that effects the taste. The current price of white-flesh pomelos is about 1 yuan/kg, the same as that of the same period of last year. The farm-gate price of red-flesh honey pomelos is about 1.5 yuan/kg, lower than the same period of last year,” Zhu, an exporter, said.
“The Netherlands is our main overseas market. Our sales channels include local Chinese supermarkets and supermarket chains. The Chinese pomelos are affordable, and their taste is readily accepted by the public. It is an established fruit and is widely appreciated by overseas consumers. The annual export volume of Chinese pomelos is 8,000-10,000 containers. In order to meet the growing demand of the European market, our production area is also expanding year by year."
The shelf life of pomelos is about 60 days if kept at a temperature of around 5 °. Overseas markets have very strict requirements for quality, and all exported products need to pass SGS pesticide residue and heavy metal testing. In order to ensure quality, many local suppliers pack their supplies in environmentally-friendly materials and then net foam protection, attach barcode ribbons and labels to them, and then pack them in cartons by size and ship them to various ports in refrigerated containers.