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TGC SEASONAL UPDATE WEEK 50 | 2018

LIMPOPO REGION

  • Harvesting in the region is nearing the halfway mark.

  • The region will finish up early in the new year with Scarlotta Seedless®.

  • Estimates still indicate that the area will be able to realize a total crop of 7.5 million cartons.

  • The final Midnight Beauty® volumes will be harvested in week 50.

  • Sable Seedless® volumes will continue into production week 51.

  • Midnight Beauty® and Sable Seedless® volumes are down compared to the previous season.

  • Crimson Seedless will come into production week 51.

  • Week 52 will be a quiet week on the production side, although going into the new year we expect the area to close strong.

  • Autumn Crisp® and Scarlotta Seedless® will be harvested in the new year and both varieties looks promising at this stage with excellent bunch configuration.

ORANGE RIVER REGION

  • The area is delayed 10-14 days (compared to previous season) varying between production units and different varieties.

  • The early varieties tend to be later compared to the mid and late varieties.

  • Harvesting of Prime and Early Sweet is coming to a close with single farms still harvesting on later production units

  • Week 51 will see an increase in the Onseepkans area (early area) on:

  • Midnight Beauty®

  • Sable Seedless®

  • Sugraone

  • Week 51 will see the Augrabies area focus on:

  • Sugraone

  • Sable Seedless® volumes picking up

  • Final harvest of Prime

  • Flame Seedless will increase in harvest volumes as well.

  • Despite a high demand for Red Seedless, volumes are coming out slow, but will increase in production week 51.

  • Weather conditions were ideal for colouring of both the red and black seedless.

  • Day temperatures reached high 30's (ºC) with evening temperatures going even below 18 ºC on a handful of evenings.

  • With the first white seedless plots being cleaned up and finished with, it appears the harvest this season is tending towards a lighter crop.

  • We do not foresee an above average crop for South Africa at this stage as the other Southern Hemisphere production regions.

WESTERN CAPE (BERG RIVER REGION | HEX RIVER REGION)

BERG RIVER

  • Producers are focusing on final preparation and applications before the start of the season.

  • Bunch preparation was time consuming this year due to aggressive fruit set at an early stage.

  • In some instances, weather conditions led to bunches being more compact than in previous years.

  • In turn, this led to producers having to have more workers on the farms to prepare the bunches and to create more space for berries to expand.

  • The result being perfect bunches with excellent size, although there was a rise in input cost.

  • Final spray application will be done on the early red seedless varieties this week.

  • The first units in the area aim to start production week 52.

  • Around production week 02 all units in the Berg River region will be in full production.

  • Especially new varieties are looking promising in the area (photos).

HEX RIVER

  • We experienced moderately cool weather up to now, after the challenging heatwaves that hit the Western Cape a few weeks ago.

  • Weather forecasts indicate that we can expect rising daily temperatures in the coming weeks.

  • Sable Seedless® is still showing the biggest effect after the heatwaves due to it happening in the fruit drop phase.

  • We expect the Sable Seedless® volumes to be down roughly by 20% - 30% depending on the production unit.

  • The quality of the fruit looks promising and we expect a firm, crispy crop.

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Please get in contact with us for additional information:

Far East - Marietjie Franzsen | Hugo van Dyk

Europe - Louise van der Merwe | CJ van Staden

North America - Le Roux Strydom | CJ van Staden

United Kingdom - Le Roux Strydom | Johann Hauptfleisch

info@thegrapeco.co.za

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