Strong winds and hail have affected banana production in a central area of the Limpopo province, with prices in the local market expected to rise by up to 20% over the coming months as a result. 

The adverse weather was experienced most severely near Tzaneen last Wednesday (Jan. 25), and also damaged some production of avocados and macadamia nuts, albeit to a lesser degree.

Speaking to Fresh Fruit Portal, South African Banana Growers Association chairman Joachim Prinsloo said large areas of plantations had been devastated.

"The tropical storm destroyed about 70% of bananas in the Limpopo province," he said, adding Limpopo was one of the two major growing regions in the country, along with neighboring Mpumalanga.

He said many banana trees had been snapped and believed it would be around a year until the plantations were producing normally again.

"The processed market in South Africa is now going to increase. There are going to be less bananas - volumes on the local market are going to be down over the next eight months," he said, adding prices would "probably increase 15-20%."

Meanwhile, a representative of the Mahela Group, a family-owned citrus-focused company that also produces bananas, avocados and macadamia nuts, said a large number of hectares of banana production had been damaged.

"It was a very strong wind and hail, but wind did the most damage - mainly on banana plantations, but also avocados and macadamia," director Francois Vorster said.

"On my portion of about 90 hectares of banana plantations, about 70% have been blown over."

He believed it would take around 15 months for the suckers to grow up again and produce fruit.

As for avocados, Vorster said it was the fruit that had been damaged as opposed to the trees, adding the company was only around five or six weeks away from harvesting.

Macadamia nut production is in a similar situation to that of avocados, he added.

Damage was also suffered to the company's infrastructure and buildings.

André Ernst of Tzaneen-based Allesbeste Nursery also said the major damage had been to the banana crops. He explained that damage to the company's avocados varieted from 'light to quite severe' and would likely result in anywhere from 10-50% of the fruit being downgraded from export class to be sold on the local market.

"We however have a fair amount of time for recovery of the legions before the fruit would be too mature to pick. At least the extend of the storm was now where near to what we have experienced with the devastating hail storm of October 2010 or that of 4 February 2016 which wiped out some of the neighbouring farms in our area," he said.

In a statement, South African Subtropical Growers’ Association (Subtrop) CEO Derek Donkin said he did not foresee any noticeable effect on next season's avocado volumes.

"There was some hail in small part of the avocado production area around Tzaneen last week. The damage, thankfully, is fairly negligible in terms of the total South African crop," he said.

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