There’s no better market for South African grapes than Europe and the UK before Christmas, a trader tells FreshPlaza, and never more so than this year – if only the grapes can get there.
The grape season has been good to growers in South Africa’s Northern Provinces so far: with the delay in grapes from Namibia and the Orange River, they had the largely empty European market to themselves for a while. “I think growers in the north are smiling from ear to ear,” says a grape exporter.
White seedless grapes have been coming in strongly from the Orange River over the past two weeks. The delay in the major grape-producing areas of Namibia and Orange River is evident in the drop in exports by the end of week 49: 5.3 million equivalent 4.5kg cartons this year compared to almost 7.5 million this time last year.
However, strong winds at Cape Town harbour, for weeks now but particularly so last week during the province’s heat wave, have been hampering the loading of containers, causing a delay of about two to five days. This is a source of frustration to growers and exporters who are missing the lucrative pre-Christmas European market; for grapes to be ready for European consumers by Christmas, they need to be off-loaded in Europe and distributed by this weekend at the latest.
Due to the continual reshuffling of schedules, it becomes very difficult to plan the arrival of grapes and many consignments end up simultaneously at Rotterdam. Some of the grapes meant for the pre-Christmas market will now by necessity stand over until the post-Christmas period, traditionally a roughly three-week period of ‘apathy’ towards fresh produce by cash-strapped consumers, leading to concerns of a post-Christmas bottleneck.
Added to the constraints at Cape Town, Durban harbour – which has long been experiencing difficulties – suffered infrastructural damage during the severe floods early in October. The South African Table Grape Industry (SATI) has warned of delays at Durban, some vessels exceeding ten days at anchorage, due to congestion. Grapes destined for the Far East are shipped from Durban, saving about a week on transit time, but volumes have had to be re-directed to Port Elizabeth Harbour.
Heavy and sustained rain for the past week in the Groblersdal and Marble Hall areas is not bothering the harvest because the vast majority of vineyards are under netting and plastic. Growers in this region fully expect heavy rains during the grape harvest season – last year as much as 260mm fell in the Groblersdal area just during this crucial period! They see the upside to this much rain during harvest: on hot clear days, rain reduces the temperatures, bringing with it a strong and even colour development.
The Northern Region is about mid-way through their harvest. They have finished with white varieties, which they only harvest until the whites from Namibia and the Orange River come in, then switching to their forte: black and red grapes. The South African Table Grape Industry (SATI) has just released figures for the season; the initial volumes coming out of the Northern Provinces are 29% up on this time last year.
Growers there are finishing up with Flame; the black seedless Midnight Beauty (Sugrathirteen), which one Groblersdal grower says tastes “super” this year and which is mostly destined for South East Asia, started coming in about two weeks ago. Tawny, a South African variety which works well in the Middle East, Russia, Scandinavia, the UK and Canada, is being packed in Limpopo. Crimson Seedless will come in about a week to 10 days.Sugraone, for which traders in the Far East are waiting impatiently according to an exporter, is not grown in this region as it doesn’t handle summer rainfall well. The Sugraone harvest is expected to commence this week in the Orange River region, starting by the Atlantic Coast and moving eastwards towards Kakamas.