This summer will be remembered for its rain, for predominantly good reasons, and the mango harvest has so far mostly escaped the usual ills associated with this amount and duration of rain, says Rossouw Kruger of Matumi Orchards in Limpopo Province. Lemon picking (still for the local market) has been delayed by the rain.
“Matumi Orchards is since 2004 an empowered company with four shareholders, one of the first empowered farms in Hoedspruit,” Rossouw recounts; he and two former colleagues at Iscor (South Africa’s steel company bought by ArcelorMittal) Kau Msimango and Marius Kritzinger invested in a citrus and mango farm in the Hoedspruit area, whence Rossouw originally hails. His cousin Ross van Reenen is the fourth partner.
They produce mangoes for the wholesale fresh markets, mostly Johannesburg and Pretoria, sometimes Cape Town and Durban too. On the fresh produce market mango prices are currently high.
Matumi Orchards also supply an extensive network of independent traders who visit the farm in Hoedspruit from as far as Botswana and, sometimes, Namibia.
Covid regulations haven’t disrupted this enterprising trade which takes mangoes across southern Africa, especially down to KwaZulu-Natal.
Mango drying of increasing importance
The Keitt harvest starts next week, for a segment that has strongly grown over the past decade: mango drying, which now takes up to a quarter of all of Matumi’s mangoes.
The Australian Calypso cultivar is useful for drying and fresh sales. Their Princess orchards are still very young.
“Mango drying is very valuable as you use your large mangoes that you can’t market fresh, where the alternative is juice. Drying adds a lot of value,”
Some of the dried mango goes into local nut and dried fruit lines or exported.
Rain disrupts lemon harvesting
Hoedspruit is also citrus country and rain, despite disrupting the lemon harvest, will be a boon to their grapefruit and their new late mandarin orchards, marketed by Unifrutti.
“Nobody is harvesting lemons at the moment, we’re waiting for the rain to subside,” Rossouw says. “But you’ll get the advantage of the rain somewhere else.”
For more information:
Rossouw Kruger
Matumi Orchards
Email: rossouwkruger50@gmail.com