{"id":387,"date":"2017-06-14T11:32:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T09:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/?p=387"},"modified":"2017-06-14T11:32:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T09:32:00","slug":"safe-zooms-in-on-far-east-usa-and-canada-for-2017-citrus-exports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/?p=387","title":{"rendered":"SAFE zooms in on Far East, USA and Canada for 2017 citrus exports"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stable, expanding citrus export markets of the Far East, United States of America and Canada have piqued the interest of Cape Town-based producer and exporter SAFE<\/a> (South African Fruit Exporters). Set to export just over 2.2 million cartons of citrus this year, SAFE is now looking at boosting exports specifically to these three regions outside of Europe.\"Wibo<\/p>\n

\u201cThese booming markets are our biggest priorities now,\u201d confirms Wibo van den Ende, Marketing Manager at SAFE, which grows and exports lemons, oranges (navels and valencias), soft citrus (mandarins and clementines) and grapefruit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year we\u2019re shifting our attention away from Europe, just slightly, and plan to export only 20% of our harvest to the continent. Thirty percent of our exports will make their way to the Middle East, 25% to the Far East, 20% to the USA and Canada, while 5% are destined for the shelves of Russia and Eastern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although it is still early days as far as SA\u2019s 2017 citrus season is concerned, Van den Ende is upbeat about this year\u2019s export prospects, which he describes as \u201cfairly promising\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Afr\"Kangelaican citrus are well received by most global markets \u2013 from the USA, Europe and the Middle East, right through to the Far East. There appears to be a larger demand for new mandarin varieties this year, while lemons still steals the show as SA\u2019s citrus export \u2018yellow gold\u2019.\u201d The country\u2019s main competitors are Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.<\/p>\n

Van den Ende says the unusual occurrence of navels splitting and dropping off their trees in the Eastern Cape (and to a lesser extent the Western Cape) will probably lead to a drop of 40% to 50% in SA\u2019s 2017 navel harvest. The other side of this coin (and good news) is that these smaller volumes push up the demand for oranges, which in turn increases prices.<\/p>\n

He points out that projections for Eastern Cape and Western Cape citrus volumes are conservative, due to the navel-drop outbreak and a backbreaking Western Cape drought resulting in record-low dam levels and serious water shortages.\"Sunland<\/p>\n

These challenges might make it difficult to meet markets\u2019 demand in terms of quality and quantity this year. \u201cFortunately SA and SAFE are looking forward to proper, high-value arrivals in August and September,\u201d says Van den Ende.<\/p>\n

SAFE continues to work closely with its quality assurance team to make certain it keeps any issues pertaining to Citrus Black Spot (CBS) and the False Codling Moth (FCM) under control \u2013 both sensitive matters especially for European importers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the right infrastructure and well-adapted storage and logistics systems in place, we ensure that we adhere to the proclaimed cold treatment measures against the FCM. In addition, we go to great lengths to comply with all conditions, regulations and checks relating to CBS,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stable, expanding citrus export markets of the Far East, United States of America and Canada have piqued the interest of Cape Town-based producer and exporter SAFE (South African Fruit …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/safe.co.za\/SAFENews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}