Avocados are in short supply in Australia just now, especially in Western Australia, this is mostly down to weather issues. A cold snap through flowering and then a couple of storms worsened the situation.
“Demand for avocados is still high,” said Jennie Franceschi from Karri Country Produce. “It was difficult earlier on when everything was closed but its mostly back to normal now.”
New Zealand has already started the avocado export to Australia, but it will be interesting to see if Chile will export this season as they now have access.
“It will have to be a good harvest in Chile for them to send avocados to Australia. With the price of Australian avocados this high I’m sure consumers would buy Chilean fruit. Although Australian consumers prefer Australian fruit I don’t think they would be averse to produce from South America as they have good food safety standards and record. While I believe as a nation we are quite parochial we still want good prices and good availability, so given we are in a short supply - high price season and Chile now have access, if they can overcome the COVID restrictions in freight, then I would not be surprised to see them in Australia this season.
“There will always be years where we have weather issues, but this is the same for every country. Australians have been planting a lot of avocados and volumes are expected to double so the price of domestic fruit will fall.”
Jennie goes on to say that at the moment export is not easy, “There are very few planes flying just now so getting space on one is difficult and expensive, these are interesting time and its difficult to tell what is going to happen as everything changes so quickly.”
For more information:
Jennie Franceschi
Karri Country Produce
Jennie@karricountryproduce.com.au