With Argentina's lemon deal finished and the orange campaign coming to a close, an industry head has reflected on a season that threw up a couple of pleasant surprises. 

Citrus growers' association Federcitrus president José Carbonell told www.freshfruitportal.com orange shippers had been exporting in far greater volumes than previously anticipated.

"The orange export campaign has been extended amid much enthusiasm in the industry," he said.

"This is because the prices in Europe rose in July and this caused export volumes to increase greatly again previous forecasts. We had been expecting to export around 40,000 pallets and now we're going to pass 70,000."

The representative said there were still significant volumes of Valencia oranges currently being shipped via seafreight and consignments would continue until the middle of the month. Small quantities of mandarins are also still being shipped.

While the Argentine orange industry has been experiencing problems related to low prices for many years now, Carbonell said this season had been far better.

"There was strong demand for juices and essential orange oils which we had not predicted a couple of months ago," he said.

"Juice has become to be like a star of activity in Argentina."

He explained the strong demand for juices was due to lower supplies from Brazil and Florida, as well as Brazil experiencing problems with taste and Brix levels.

"This was a good surprise for the sector, because sweet fruits like oranges and mandarins have been complicated for us. We had two or three years of low prices both for fresh and juicing, and that affected the sector," he said.

As for the lemon sector, Carbonell said the season had wrapped up two weeks ago and had been positive overall for the industry.

"The season was good. We exported 280,000 metric tons (MT) and apart from the last 15 days the prices were satisfactory and consistent," he said.

In 2015, just 185,000MT were exported from the South American country.

A record of 450,000MT was achieved in 2008, but in 2013 severe frosts struck the industry and brought the following year’s exports volumes down to 150,000MT.

In terms of quality, Carbonell said the industry had taken great care due to some autumn rains which can affect the fruit, but he added there was a robust system in place to ensure only high quality fruit was exported.

Photo: www.shutterstock.com

www.freshfruitportal.com