Initially Chilean cherry growers were expecting a good season with good volumes of fruit, but rain in November put paid to that. The country also saw floods through the winter which they were not accustomed to.
“In the spring, just before harvest we got rain in our cherry growing regions, then 10 days later just as we had started picking, we got more rain,” explains Boris Manz, Commercial and Procurement Manager at Fruit Growers Alianza, the UK import company for San Clemente & Gesex.
“We will be around 65% down on the early varieties, the mid-season varieties may also be down in volumes, not as dramatically as the early ones though. This is due to larger than normal fruit drop. The Regina varieties are coming along slower than normal.”
This reduction in volumes is having an effect on the volumes sent Europe and the UK. Traditionally 90% of Chilean cherries go to China and this year will be no different.
“We are trying to allocate some cherries to our customers in the Europe and UK, but this is a challenge because due to all of the rain the Chilean industry had to use a fungicide in weeks 47-50 to preserve the fruit that we had, but this is not permitted in Europe and the UK so it would be too much risk to send to those markets in case the MRLs are too high.”
Despite these challenges Boris said they are sending weekly airfreight loads to try to fill European customer’s orders as well as working with all alternatives to load containers if operation & quality allow so.
Another challenge is the delays and reduction of vessels permitted to go through the Panama Canal. This has been reduced from 30-40 vessels to just 18 in January. This is affecting mainly dry bulk.
“With a product like cherries we need to keep the transit time as short as possible. Our customers have been very understanding, we have kept them informed every step of the way and this is an industry wide problem. We don’t expect it to affect our customer relations. It has been a challenging season but we will continue to try to supply our customers.”
For more information:
Boris Manz
Fruit Growers Alianza
[email protected]