Dear Readers,
March lies already behind us and the bulk of the deliveries from
South African farmers to the various packers came meanwhile, more or
less, to a standstill.
Overlooking the situation of this years’ crop, one can say that the
negative weatherpattern during the beginning of the drying period of
the crop (January/mid February) was afterall and happily not as bad as
everybody was afraid of.
CROP-FIGURES!
Officially we will get those cropfigures later in the year but
speaking to farmers in general, it seems that the crop shall be
slightly bigger than most people feared after the adverse weather in
January.
Insiders estimate the crop at abt 60.000 tons
This will go into the books as a reasonable figure but
what is striking, is the percentage of golden mediums and jumbos.
The total tonnage of the latter is importantly smaller than the last
3/4 years and for those dealers and manufacturers who wish to buy some containers for
later shipments, it will definitely become rather difficult to find
some. At least at decent prices.
SHIPMENTS
All early and first shipments went out meanwhile direction North Africa, Middle East,
and Europe .
This means that now the time will come to deliver the South African raisins to
other parts of the world.
As said in the beginning: this year’s crop is over and done with, for
the greater part.
We will be back in August, when the new crop is starting to bud again.