A number of South African exporters have put their consignments for Russia - mostly grapes, pears and stonefruit, as well as lemons - on hold for the moment. "We won't continue loading until there is more clarity on the situation," says one exporter. "But it's not looking good, we could basically lose an entire market and it could have an effect on other markets."
"Everything depends on today," he adds. "The level of uncertainty is terrible. No-one knows what's going on, especially with the deterrent notice issued by Russia."
South African fruit diverted away from St Petersburg could lead to an oversupply elsewhere.
A fresh market in St Petersburg, April 2021 (Photo 218565061 © 1701200801 | Dreamstime.com)
"More information is necessary and the situation changes by the day. Of course there's currently greater risk for exporters supplying Russia but food remains a human right and the fruit trade has to continue," says a fruit export industry official.
Russian Federation a very important pear & citrus market
As FreshPlaza reported last week, South African pears and, to a lesser extent stonefruit, have been performing very well in Russia recently. South African pears are currently in great demand in Russia, which takes more than a fifth of the country's pears.
Russia's contribution to South African apple trade stands at 6%, a figure not expected to further grow due to Russia's recent expansion into apple production and storage facilities.
The Russian Federation is also a very important market for South African citrus, taking between 8% and 9% of the various categories. St Petersburg received the third highest number of pallets of South African citrus, after Rotterdam and London Gateway, according to Citrus Growers' Association 2021 statistics.
A lot of grapes from South Africa and India had been shipped to Russia over the past few weeks. By week 7, over 780,000 4.5kg cartons of South African grapes had been sent there, more than last year YTD but still fewer than had been sent to Russia by this time two years ago.
Since the 1.6 million cartons of grapes sent to Russia during the 2016/17 season, the volumes have been coming down every year until just over a million cartons of grapes sent during the 2020/21 season.