Australia's only commercial Achacha grower says the fruit could also be available internationally mid year, with a grower coming online in the Northern Hemisphere.
Bruce Hill, who manages the Achacha Plantation in the Burdekin Shire, in North Queensland says the world's second commercial production should be on the market next season, which will complement Australia's supply.
"Just exporting enough fruit, to get the name out and about has been good for us because until now we have been the only producer, so not many people know about our fruit," Mr Hill said. "Fortunately there is a grower in Central America, who has a similar number of trees coming on-stream this season. One of the complaints we have had is that our season is just three months, normally January, February and March; now if we have this other grower he can get the fruit into the international market June, July, August, that's two three month periods, and the fruit will become better known."
The international growth comes as the Australian farm battled through a shortened season. Weather did not help, with a warm winter last year, with very little rain delaying the flowering until October, two months later than expected. When the harvest got underway, it was disrupted by Tropical Cyclone Debbie.
"It was coming at us for several days but at the last minute it deviated to the south," Mr Hill said. "We only got some of the side effects of it, but we still had to prepare for it, packing away all our production line which slowed us down significantly. When we were ready to start again, we were without electricity and water for the best part of a week."
The disruptions have meant that Achacha still have a small amount of the produce. Mr Hill says this year it was smaller in volume and fruit size than normal, but demand for the fruit continues to grow.
"In terms of volume it wasn't a great year, but in terms of prices and demand it was good," he said. "We found last year we reached a tipping point as people started knowing about the fruit."
During the last couple of years demand for Achachas has been growing, so much so, Mr Hill has been struggling to get enough fruit on the market. This year he has added Hong Kong and Canada to the countries that he exports to, in addition to major United Kingdom chain Marks and Spencer. But he says he always tries to keep enough fruit to meet demand in Australia, with word of mouth events such as farmers’ markets being a highly effective marketing tool in promoting the fruit.
"We do whatever we can, with limited costs," Mr Hill said. "My wife Helen does the marketing and social media work and we have developed a lot of followers from that, asking where they can get the fruit. But it's been a long hard slog getting the name out. We had a partner who said to us 'this fruit will sell itself', but you still have to do the hard work of marketing it and getting it to retailers and the public so they can try it. Nine times out of ten, once people try it, they buy it."
Mr Hill also produces honey from the flowers of the Achachas, which he says is always in high demand, but production nearly halved this year due to the short flowering season.
For more information:
Bruce Hill
Achacha
Phone: +61 419 400407