The vast majority of Australia's mango trees are currently in the dormant stage before flowering, but the industry is already making plans for harvests, sales and marketing.

Australian Mango Industry Association (AMIA) CEO Robert Gray tells www.freshfruitportal.com the country exported around 12% of mangoes produced last season, and this year that percentage will likely be somewhere between 12-15%.

"It's en route to 20%, so it’s a steady, incremental increase each year," he said.

"There are some underlying strategies that are ongoing from season to season, and that’s a strong focus on quality and underpinning that is the strong eating experience of the product, focusing on making sure we harvest the crop at its ideal maturity.

"There’s ongoing work at the industry level to make sure we’ve got good data so we know what we think the crop’s going to be in terms of quantities and timing, and when it does start to harvest capturing the actual quantities by week and variety."

He said these two aspects were key for growing demand both domestically and in export markets.

"In that export space we’ve got our very strong program looking at how we can double our exports over this planning cycle, and that’s being done by a combination of adding new and emerging markets to the spread of customers in places like the U.S. and Indonesia.

"We are working with existing markets to make them more efficient, so places like China, South Korea, Japan, it’s about improving our protocols so they're more cost effective and more effective at delivering quality to those markets.

"Then we’ve got the more established tier of markets like Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and the Middle East where it’s very much about working with the supply chain and retailers to grow demand for Australian product."

In the U.S., Gray said the goal was to increase volume this year by potentially testing new trade routes, but could not reveal where given the sensitivities of the testing protocol in the North American country.

"Generally Australia is supplying product into the U.S. and we’re hoping to increase it slowly over the years," he said.

"Our focus is very much around conformance to the protocol and starting to understand the U.S. consumer."

The executive also described the Indonesian market as "exciting".

"Australia hasn’t supplied that market for quite a while now, and having the official protocol released, we’ll be back into that market again this year with supplies - it'll be about starting to build relationships and tapping into that part of the market that’s looking for the Australian-flavored product.

"We’re only going to be a small player in most of these countries – they have their own mango supply with their own varieties for most of the year.

"Our idea is about bringing Australia’s unique genetics to those markets. They’re largely more expensive but they hit a target market at the more affluent end of the demographic in that market, and that’s where we’ll be focusing our energies to make that a success."

But could this focus on the genetic uniqueness of Australia's mangoes extend to licensing varieties, like the Kensington Pride, overseas?

"There’s nothing on the drawing board. They are all possibilities – as an industry we’re very keen to share our learnings and help other industries develop their businesses," he said.

"There's nothing in the planning at this stage. But we’re always happy to look at those opportunities."

Photo: Aussie Mangoes, via Instagram

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