South African fruit company Tru-Cape has said hail damage, the drought and high summer temperatures are expected to reduce its 2018 pome fruit crop by about 10%.

It also believes a greater proportion of small fruit might lead to a drop in export income. 

The company's marketing director Conrad Fick said because of this the company has been negotiating purchase programs with customers to maximize the value of their growers' whole bin and to return maximum value to them.

Andre Cloete, a Tru-Cape grower at in the Overberg, near Greyton, said that hail had damaged 35% of his crop of red apples, while the crop of Golden Delicious - still the favorite apple on the African continent - has been reduced by 55%.

“We saw sunburn damage from temperatures as high as 44ºC (111ºF) for two consecutive days, followed by 75ml (3 inches) of rain in two hours during a drought period which led to flooding. Hail stones, the size of my thumb nail, came next”, Cloete says.

"We are experiencing one extreme in climate to the next."

Cloete says they typically receive 1,000-1,200ml (40-47 inches) of winter rainfall annually, but in this last year they have had to reduce their pome fruit irrigation by 60%. Now the trees are only getting 40% of their water requirements.

Both Fick and Cloete agree that the staying quality of fruit impacted by the drought will play a role in reducing income from the current crop.

“Areas that will take five or more weeks for our product to land on shelves such as at our Northern American and Canadian customers and some customers in the Far East are most at risk of fruit arriving at less than optimum quality because of the impact of drought and high temperatures," Fick says.

"Our technical teams are, however, working around the clock doing maturity testing and other examinations of fruit to ensure we are able to supply the very best product despite the challenges."

Year-round supply

Fick says that for Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, the largest exporter of South African apples and pears, its ability to supply pome fruit year-round is one of its strategic advantages.

“Part of our procurement strategy is to have fruit available from a number of different climatic regions so that when climate impacts fruit from one region we are able to source fruit from another region”, he says.

Tru-Cape has growers in the Elgin, Grabouw, Villiersdorp and Vyeboom valleys as well as in Ceres and the Witzenberg Valleys as well as in the Langkloof area on the edge of the Western Cape.

“Tru-Cape packs in 147,000 different permutations when we consider the variety, size, color, spec and brand into which we pack," Fick says.

"Even though we are South Africa’s largest exporter, South Africa is just about one percent of global apple and pear production with China growing around half of all the apples and pears in the world.

"Like all South African exporters we are competing with growers and marketers in Argentina, Chile, New Zealand and even in Europe although we benefit from being counter-seasonal so are able to supply our customers in Europe, and other northern hemisphere areas, when they cannot produce."

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