The early pear variety, Celina, kicks-off the 2024 South African blush pear season as the earliest commercially available of this type from the country. Celina offers Stargrow customers the opportunity to sell the first blush pears in their respective markets every year.
“It has a size profile larger than other blush pears that enables the company to target a wider market spread, which leads to increased returns back to farm-gate for our growers. We are already into the fourth week of packing Celina’s, which is expected to enter into empty markets across the world as customers confirms increased demand levels due to various factors leading to a lower than normal northern hemisphere production,” says Sauer Krige who heads up the trading division at Stargrow Fruit Marketing.
“Over the past four seasons we have focused on developing all of the major blush pear markets with good success and will continue to build on this momentum going into the 2024 season. One such example is the Chinese market which returned very competitive prices in 2023 and which already indicated that the market is anxiously awaiting the 2024 season’s fruit to arrive. Stargrow expects to substantially increase volumes to this market during the 2024 season, especially in the early harvest window,” says Krige.
Apart from the China and the European Union countries, other markets where Stargrow has managed to gain momentum with the Celina variety includes Russia, Canada, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Celina’s ability to be ripened has also led to an increased uptake in the UK retail sector under the management of World Wide Fruit. “We have found the variety to be a positive addition to the pear catalogue. The key attributes are the brand name aligned to the appearance of the fruit and in particular the capability to market the fruit both as an unripe and ripe variety. This opens wider marketing opportunities with most of the sales in the UK currently for ripe fruit,” says Keith Butterworth of World Wide Fruit.
Growers will continue to harvest Celina over the next three weeks. Should any growers want to visit orchards or packhouses to gain more information about the variety they can contact Estelle Goosen at Stargrow.
For more information:
Estelle Goosen
Stargrow Group
Tel: +27 21 880 1882
Email: estelle@stargrow.co.za