Canadian cherry company Jealous Fruits has described the recent season as a strange one, due to the campaign being cut short much earlier than anticipated and a high proportion of small fruit. 

However, a representative of the British Columbia-based organization said 2017 had been successful on the whole thanks to good fruit quality.

General sales manager Julie McLachlan told Fresh Fruit Portal the company had had to contend with excessive heat throughout much of the summer, leading to a "compressed" season. 

"We had originally projected we were going to finish around Sept. 5-8 and we ended up finishing on Aug 26," she said.

She said another challenge was reduced cell division in the cherries - likely the result of high temperatures after blossom - which led to fruit that was below the optimal sizing.

Despite this, the company's total production of around 3,800 metric tons (MT) was in line with projections. 

"We had more cherries, they were just smaller," she said.

She noted much of the cherry industry in Washington and British Columbia had struggled with similar issues this year. 

However, thanks to the location of the company's orchard blocks, Jealous Fruits had not faced experienced low Brix levels - as had been the case for many others.

"We were generally running anywhere from 20-24 Brix which is extremely good sugar levels," she said.

"I think it’s because we're further north in the Okanagan Valley. We had warm temperatures but we didn’t have the extreme heat they had in Washington and southern British Columbia that will certainly cause the sugar levels to stall.

"A lot of our blocks are at a quite high elevation and our lower elevation blocks are along Okanagan Lake, which gives us a really good moderating effect. So overall quality was excellent from our perspective, it was just not the size profile that we normally have."

Many cherry growers in the U.S. Northwest struggled with a saturated domestic market during the second half of their season, but McLachlan explained there had not been too much overlap.

"Our season started around July 10 and for the first 10 days we had very small volumes so were able to move that with no problems," she said.

"By the time our main volume came on, while there was certainly a lot of Washington and Canadian fruit around our partners continued to support us and we were able to move our crop. We were in a bit of a luxury position whereby we didn’t see a lot of the issues that other growers did."

Export markets

Around 45% of Jealous Fruits' cherries are sold in the U.S, with exports also going to China, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the U.K.

McLachlan said the smaller size profile had been good news for markets such as the U.S., noting the company had some direct retail programs in China and Dubai which preferred smaller fruit.

"But for a lot of markets like Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam that are used to buying and wanted to buy larger size fruit, we certainly saw a dip in sales in those areas just because we didn’t have the size profile that they wanted," she said.

"We always like to have a diversification of sizes so we can supply all markets, but this year was a very unusual season."

McLachlan also noted there had been a vast difference in Chinese market cherry prices this year.

"In China if a product is good it's going to move and you're going to get a good price on it, but if you're shipping substandard fruit there's really no floor as to how low the pricing can go," she said.

"We've seen some really extreme pricing throughout the market this year, it’s actually been quite interesting to see. We were a little bit concerned that if there were a lot of poor arrivals the market might not be able to rebound and pay for good quality arrivals."

The company has also seen "significant growth" in its Middle Eastern retail programs.

"They take very good volume, so that certainly helped drive our business this year," she said.

Aggressive expansion plan

Jealous Fruits is undergoing a rapid expansion plan, with 150 acres of cherry trees set to be planted annually for the next three years. Production is set to triple to around 10,000MT within five years as result.

A new packhouse will also be operational ahead of the 2019 season to handle the upcoming volumes.

In addition, the entity has an in-house breeding program and is currently working with a couple of promising varieties.

"They're not in commercial production yet, but we’re optimistic that the new plantings will help to extend the season even more than we’re already doing," McLachlan said.

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