A South African group of fruit producers intends to be the first to send a trial of consignment citrus from its area in the Limpopo province to the U.S. later this year. 

The Loskop Valley-based GOGO Group is hoping to send a trial shipment of its best quality oranges this coming season through its parent company EKM Exports.

While currently only citrus from South Africa's Western Cape is permitted to enter the U.S., in August 2014 the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) proposed a rule that would allow imports from provinces where citrus black spot (CBS) is known to occur, such as the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo.

Fruit shipped from these areas would be required to be imported in commercial consignments and would have to be produced in accordance with the systems approach.

"We’re trying to do the first shipments from our area to the U.S. this year, and we’re still in the process of getting that organized," EKM Exports and GOGO Group managing director Eben Kruger told www.freshfruitportal.com.

"We haven’t confirmed it yet, but hopefully we will be the first from the Loskop Valley to do a trial for the coming season. We’d start with some top quality fruit to see how it goes there. The U.S. is a very interesting market for us," he said.

Kruger said that if the trial were to go ahead, varieties that would be shipped would include Cambrias and Midnights. GOGO's packing season is expected to run from around week 16 through week 35.

Although the Loskop Valley is a relatively young citrus production area in South Africa, Kruger said it has grown to be the second-largest production area in terms of volume.

GOGO's citrus is also shaping up well for the coming season, with good volumes and good quality expected.

"There's nothing much that's different from the previous season, and I believe quality should be better this year, from our area definitely," he said.

Last November, EKM Exports also announced that South African cricket star AB de Villiers - who captains the country's One Day International team - would be the face of GOGO Citrus's 2015 marketing campaign.

Poor grape prices

Along with citrus, GOGO also produces a range of table grape varieties, including Prime, Starlight, Red Globe and Crimson.

Kruger said while the quality had been good all season, an oversupply of fruit that had arrived in some key markets after Christmas caused prices to plummet.

"South Africa has had a very bad season for grapes that arrived after Christmas. The world market basically crashed," he said.

"South Africa's crop is now competing with other countries in the same timeline, and there were simply too many grapes in the market."

Kruger added that GOGO would likely still be exporting table grapes until around week 10 this year.

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