Following the third consecutive early season, Northwest Cherry Growers has urged the industry and its partners to adapt and take commercial advantage from what could be 'the new normal'.

The final shipments of the successful campaign wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, with preliminary figures suggesting the region may have notched its third-largest crop in history with around 20.8 million boxes. 

Reflecting on the season, the grower association's president B.J. Thurlby told www.freshfruitportal.com the industry may need to get used to the earlier start date.

"Our season started about May 20, which is our earliest start ever, and our volume was pretty much done by July 25," he said.

"There are some growers that have high-elevation orchards that have been quietly shipping fruit out for the last three weeks or so, but overall the volume finished really early for us."

He said this was a marked change from tradition, as the last shipments had typically come to a close at the beginning of September.

"The question of course we’re all asking ourselves is, ‘is this the new normal?’" he said.

"We’ve had three years in a row that have been warm, with early starts, and this one being the earliest start ever. So the current production trend that we are on is start early, early fruit in May, and lots of fruit in June.

"We had a record crop in June this year - we shipped 12.3 million boxes. Last year we shipped 11.8 million which was a previous record. So we’ve had two record years for a row."

Thurlby explained that while the new dynamics would be largely beneficial for domestic sales, the early fruit would have to compete more heavily with local supplies in some export markets.

"From the United States perspective, the Fourth of July celebrations are our biggest produce sales holiday and it falls right in the middle of our cherry season, so the more fruit we get out before that, the better," he said, but added other market outlooks were 'not quite as positive'.

"We usually have fruit pretty much as late as anybody in the Northern Hemisphere...so that means we have been able to pick up a lot of business in the U.K., Belgium, and France as the European cherries run out.

"But this year we've been right on top of the growers in [the southeastern English county of] Kent, we’re on top of the Turkish growers, and it just didn’t match up in Europe for us this year. So that’s one of the downsides of having this early fruit."

While U.K.-bound shipments in the past had been as high as 400,000 boxes, this year the figure stood at around 10,000.

"We’ve had a long tradition of quality cherries going into Europe, it just has to be late," he said.

Earlier domestic promotion needed

While little can be done about the situation in Europe, Thurlby said it would be essential for the industry and its partners to prepare promotional activities sooner in the year, if the early trend continues.

"It’s simple to say but it’s not as easily achieved," he said.

"Part of the reason is California has traditionally not had large crops in the last four or five years, meaning they really haven’t sold at promotional prices. That's wonderful if you're a grower, but the challenge there is we actually need to move more fruit sooner than we ever have before."

"So we need to as an industry - not just the Northwest industry, this means all of our importers and retail partners around the world - we’ve got to be saying, ‘you know with these Northwest cherries, if this weather pattern stays in place the reality is these cherries are now promotable in June’."

The representative said this would be a substantial change in the industry, but it would be necessary to continue to thrive in the future.

"It will be a real challenge, but if this weather pattern holds we need to be educating the trade that they should be looking to promote early, and that’s an opportunity that they need to take advantage of," he said.

Demand as high as it's ever been

There may be challenges for the future, but Thurlby said this season growers selling domestically had a 'very good run'.

Although pre-season expectations of around 20 million boxes later fell due to some weather-related issues, Thurlby said the industry 'just kept picking' and managed to surpass initial projections.

"We really thought this thing was shorter than that, and it just kept coming off," he said, adding demand for the high-quality crop had been very strong.

"I honestly have done this now some 20-something years, and it was as good a demand as I’ve ever seen because the fruit really ate well and it was large sizes. This year we had the largest percentage of 10-row fruit we’ve ever had."

He added some heavy rainfall in California had shorted their season and meant there wasn't much of a crossover between the two regions.

Exports into Asia had also enjoyed a strong year, he said.

"It looks like we shipped about 1.4 million boxes to China, and another 300,000 or so to Hong Kong.

"We’ve shipped more than that in the past, but it was still a very good year for China. We had a really good year in Asia in general."

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