Collaboration and trust: how to pack and process a million cartons of citrus every day

Excerpt from article on Fresh Plaza:

“At Schoonbee Landgoed, a family farm which celebrates fifty years of producing high quality grape and citrus in the Loskop Valley, the navel harvest has come to an end, making way for Valencias and Leanri mandarins.

Last year’s orange scenario will not play out again due to higher orange yields in the Northern Hemisphere and more stock from other origins like Spain, Morocco and Egypt. “Last year we moved into a very desirable position. This year it is the complete opposite,” says marketing manager Gert Upton.

Their Valencias cover almost the entire globe, from Canada eastwards to Japan. While Europe still has Valencia supply, they’ll be sending it to the Far East where the end of the Northern Hemisphere Valencia is nearing.

Demand for lemons is very slow. The Northern Hemisphere had a big crop and places like the Middle East still had fruit when more than 900 thousand cartons of South African lemons arrived in week 16. This caused the Middle East market to crash (as it did last year, only a week earlier), while the EU is slightly better, although it still has Spanish fruit.”.

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