South African stone fruit season has started at Capespan Continent

The new South African stone fruit season has started again at Capespan Continent. The first container was expected on Monday 11 November according to Joep Jongmans, product manager for stone fruit. The first container was expected to contain nectarines and peaches. "The nectarines are of the SuperStar variety, and peaches are AmberCrest. Both varieties are a good colour and nicely round and are semi exclusive to the Capespan brand."

Fewer apricots
"After the first shipment there should be weekly arrivals of South African CAPE stone fruit. The stone fruit season runs until mid May when the last plums arrive. After nectarines and peaches we see the first plums and finally apricots at the end of November."

"The forecast for the new South African stone fruit season is good particularly for plums. There are good volumes of different new varieties and large sizes. The nectarine and peach harvest was also good. The busiest arrival time is in December. We are, however, expecting fewer apricots from South Africa in the 2013 – 2014 season."

Good market
According to Joep the market is presently very good. "There will be limited availability in this and the following two weeks until the beginning of December so we expect the market to remain good." This year there will be less fruit coming in from Chile because of the frost, and subsequent smaller harvest. This will have influence on the prices of South African stone fruit, not only for the peaches, nectarines and apricots which are now on the market, but also on the prices of South African plums during the months of February, March, April and May."

For more information:
Joep Jongmans
Capespan Continent N.V.
Tel: +32 3 5460939
www.capespan.com