The annual Maluma Symposium would normally be taking place now, drawing visitors from the avocado world to Tzaneen in Limpopo, but due to Covid it has been postponed and fortuitously too, says Donovan Lewis, Allesbeste marketing manager: the avocado harvest has just started and they’re doing a lot of things anew this season, like taking over marketing of all of the avocados from Allesbeste’s farms plus those of two other producers.
"Allesbeste Bemarking will optimise on the season through harvesting from week 9 until week 21, and then again harvesting from week 31 to week 35. We'll stop harvesting for ten weeks to lessen our exposure to the very high peak in Europe," Donovan explains.
During that period Avor, their European sales office located in the Netherlands, will receive avocados from partner growers in other origins like Peru. In that way, he says, their customers are assured of a stable year-round avocado supply in Europe.
The first avocados (Fuerte) of the season (photos supplied by Allesbeste Bemarking)
The very first containers to be marketed by Avor have just left Tzaneen for Cape Town with the first greenskin avocados of the new season. The CA containers are sealed in Tzaneen, only re-opened by the buyer in the Northern Hemisphere, to avoid containerisation at cold stores in Cape Town. The procedure requires prodigious planning but it’s what they’ve always done with their proprietary Maluma avocado cultivar (it makes up roughly half of their volumes), this year they’ll be doing this as far as possible with all of their avocados.
From this year Allesbeste’s European and UK sales are handled by their company Avor, situated in Poeldijk, as part of their strategy to shorten the chain between the orchard and the consumer through increased efficiency, thereby bolstering on-farm returns. It functions as an alternative consolidation point to Cape Town.
A Cape Town-bound truck leaving Tzaneen with CA containers of avocados
“The reason we’re doing it this way now, is because a sales agency that’s situated close to the market has a much better reading of the market,” Donovan points out. They have come to the conclusion that avocado marketing will have to be re-considered, given the proliferation of avocado-producing countries and available volumes.
The Allesbeste Nursery, where research and development are ongoing, is the source of the Maluma cultivar. “There are a lot of new varieties on the horizon of which we’ve established trial plantings.”
Prospects for new avo season much improved
Last year was a challenging year for South African avocado growers, working with a small-sized crop as a result of drought, competing head-on with Peru’s large volumes in Europe, compounded by Covid-related delays at Cape Town harbour.
This year rain has been plentiful and the Tzaneen Dam is overflowing its lowered dam wall.
“Our fruit sized up really well this year. We’re always hesitant to say much this early on, but after the first week of packing it’s looking really good, we can see our packout percentages are higher than last year.”
The essence of their outlook, Donovan says, is to make themselves as aerodynamic as possible. “This is a logical step to centralise opportunities that arise for ourselves and our growers.”
For more information:
Donovan Lewis
Allesbeste Bemarking
Tel: +27 15 307 3076
Email: donovan@allesbeste.com
Nico Spruijt
Avor B.V.
Tel: +31 174 479 270
Email: nico@avor.farm