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Market overview southern hemisphere grapes
Overall growing and demand
Peru and Chilean grape demand is particularly strong in Mexico, and increasing in Canada, the USA, and Asia as California completes their ‘storage season’. Vanguard is seeing the first arrivals of grapes from their own ranches in Peru into various markets around the world and the results have been very positive season to date. Overall quality and condition have been very well received.
Peruvian grapes
The Peru grape harvest for traditional red and green grapes will be completed by the third week of February. IP varieties will be completed by the end of February, followed by the organic grape harvest predicted to be completed the first week in March.
The endless fight against illegal growing of proprietary varieties
Grapa’s vast experience enforcing the rights of their protected varieties has led to several seizures of suspicious grape shipments from oversees. In July 2020, a shipment of 11 tons of illegally grown grapes arriving from Egypt was seized at the port of Ravenna, Italy. The variety in subject is the well-known white seedless grape variety Early Sweet™, owned by Grapa Company, a family-owned business leader in the field of table grape breeding and licensing. The Early Sweet grapes arriving at the Ravenna Port from Egypt and destined to a company in Veneto was promptly identified as suspicious.
South Africa s table grape exports remain lower than previous seasons
December 24 , 2020
South Africa maintains its slower-than-normal season as export volumes remained below previous years through week 51.
In a recent newsletter published by the South African Table Grape Industry (SATI), the numbers show that a little over 7.55 million cartons (4.5kg equivalent) had been shipped by the end of the week.
Last season the country had shipped over 12.61 million cartons by the same week, showing a 60 percent decrease year-on-year by week 51.
In the 2018-19 season, 12.30 million cartons were shipped and 12.62 million in 2017-18, by week 51.
Looking at the various production regions, SATI data shows that in 2019 the Northern Provinces had 3.54 million cartons inspected while this year it has had 3.77 million cartons inspected through week 50.
South African grape packing going well, with good berry sizes
The South African grape harvest is now well underway with three production regions now packing, namely the Northern Provinces, Orange River and Olifants River regions. The Berg and Hex River regions have not started packing yet. These two regions are also expected to start about a week later than last year. INTAKE UP TO Week 50 and EXPORTS UP TO WEEK 51 (accumulative) Intakes PPECB data - Exports AgriHub data
Northern Provinces
Packing is going well under good weather conditions. The quality of grapes are reported to be very good with very nice berry sizes achieved. They are done packing Prime, Early Sweet (Grapaes), Starlight, and Flame.