Bundaberg farmer, Craig Van Rooyen, intended to look close to home when employing help to ship his lychees out. That enabled him to make sure a first shipment has touched down in the United States. Van Rooyen: "This is a long time in the making. We've been working on this project to supply into America for about nine years. We sent about 23 consignments to Los Angeles, and we actually sent the first consignment from Australia ever that went directly to New York. They received it and they loved the fruit."
Van Rooyen also exports to Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada and the Middle East. He admits shipping to New York was a gamble: "Our fantastic marketing agent organised it and said, 'Would you be prepared to take a risk and send it there?' and I said, 'Well, yeah! They've loved it in Los Angeles, so let's try this other destination'.”
"We were sending six pallets of fruit, so if it didn't arrive it's risking probably $50,000. But if it did work, it was a potential market for the future. So, it was a risk worth taking."
However, Van Rooyen said the lychee season came with challenges due to the pandemic: "It was very difficult to find enough staff. We have a great core of people that come back year after year, but that was about 40 people and we really needed 100 people. Finding those people was not too difficult but keeping them here with all the COVID restrictions was challenging.”
"We had to test people, and if they were feeling slightly ill they had to stay at home — so most days we were 20 to 25 people down. We did over 90 per cent export and employed over 90 Bundaberg people for that eight-week period. A lot of school and university students, and they all said they want to come next year, so it's great."
Source: abc.net.au
Photo source: Dreamstime.com
