"This year the weather conditions are not great in tangerine production areas in Sichuan. First, when the tangerine trees were in bloom, the orchards suffered from drought as well as hailstones. The flowers were unable to absorb enough water to develop. That had a definite impact on the ratio of fruit-bearing trees this year." This is according to manager Li of Sichuan Bai Guo Hui who recently talked about the conditions in Sichuan tangerine orchards.
"The fruit trees are now bearing fruit. The diameter of the tangerines barely reaches 1.3-1.5 mm and many of the tangerines fall off the trees. The overall surface area devoted to tangerine plantation is more or less the same as last year, so we estimate that the overall production volume of Sichuan tangerines will be much smaller than last year."
When asked about the management of fallen fruit, manager Li answered: "We gather the fallen fruit and sell them collectively to local buyers. These buyers generally use the tangerines to manufacture ingredients or food additives. The purchase price of wet tangerines is around 8-10 yuan [1.13-1.41 USD] per kg, while the purchase price of dry tangerines is 35-36 yuan [4.93-5.07 USD] per kg."
"We have sold around 1.5 million kg of tangerines this season. The vast majority of this sales volume was absorbed by the market before Chinese Spring Festival [25 January, 2020]. The market slowed down significantly in the two months after Spring Festival. Sales were obstructed by the measures taken to limit the spread of COVID-19. IN addition, the storage capacity of refrigerated warehouses in production areas was limited. As much as 10% of the harvest spoiled because sales slowed down. That is normally only around 5%," explained manager Li.
"We still have a small volume of Orri mandarins from Yunnan in our warehouse. We expect this last volume to be sold out by the end of next week. Market supply of tangerines greatly exceeds market demand from the beginning of April onward. The price then rapidly declines. Some fruit traders were forced to sell their tangerines to local distributors for less than 3 yuan [0.42 USD] per 0.5 kg, so that the tangerines could be absorbed locally. In some cases fruit traders relied on online channels to sell their tangerines. The current price of Orri mandarins from Yunnan is 3-3.5 yuan [0.42-0.49 USD] per 0.5 kg."
Sichuan Bai Guo Hui has a distinct advantage in the market because the company combines production and marketing. "In addition to almost 133 hectares devoted to tangerine plantation, we also produce all the organic fertilizer and other agricultural resources that we use in our orchard. We also have our own processing facility. At the same time, we also manage our own supply chain. That means our products can be sold immediately after processing. In that way we eliminate the middleman. That means we can keep our price relatively low, which gives us a distinct market advantage."
For more information:
Li - Manager
Sichuan Bai Guo Hui
Tel.: +86 18328377868