California is in the middle of its late navel orange harvest and supply looks plentiful. "It's an oversupply market. There's a lot of fruit available," says Jesse Silva of Kings River Packing, a family-owned and operated eight-generation grower-packer-shipper.
This comes following a challenging growing season for the state. "There's been a lot of issues with warm weather, etc. We're happy we're into the late navels now and we're packing ourselves to smoothly transition into our import crop coming in mid to late July," says Silva.
© Kings River Packing
That's generally when domestic California oranges switch over to imports from Chile. "The crop is setting up to not go past mid-July. This is not a year that the fruit is going to last a long time on the tree because the maturity is advanced and the growing season hasn't been colder," he says. "We like the colder weather to give us really strong fruit on the back end."
Eating quality is good on the fruit as well. "Our fruit size also grew so much more than expected due to the warm weather we experienced during the growing season, both in the summer and winter months," adds Silva.
Promotions, promotions, promotions
As for demand, it's steady though the size of this crop has allowed for more promotional opportunities–something retailers and wholesalers are quite responsive to. This comes amidst shortages with other typical promotable produce items turning at this time such as corn and other vegetables due to weather impacts. In turn, this could allow potentially more shelf space for navel oranges.
On pricing, it is starting to increase. Typically at this time, King's River Packing has a bit more fruit and this year it's more plentiful though the company is mindful of not wrapping up supply too fast to ensure a smooth transition to imports is ahead. It's also the time of year when some smaller suppliers drop off for the season and larger suppliers take up that demand. "The market is elevating a bit and throughout May and June, we'll see promotable supplies through June," adds Silva, adding that what is seeing an increased promotional focus is larger-size navels in the 36s and 40s sizing.
© Kings River Packing
Meanwhile the company also began harvesting Valencia juicing oranges and its supply is expected to go through the end of October. "There's been a lot of demand for juicing Valencias. We have conventional and organic and California has a domestic footprint pretty much all year long between navels and Valencias. We're looking to take advantage of that with certain retail groups looking for domestic fruit and surety of supply," says Silva.
As for imports, the Chilean crop looks good at the moment and also sizing larger and peaking on medium to large fruit.
For more information:
Jesse Silva
Kings River Packing
Tel: +1 (559) 574-1285
https://kingorange.com/
