CITRUSDAL, South Africa – Summer Citrus from South Africa (SCSA) announces a strong 2020 season as the first vessel of the year makes its way to the United States this week.
Easy Peeler Clementines will be the first fruit to arrive this month at the New York port. More Easy Peelers and some Navel Oranges will follow with the first conventional vessel arriving in Philadelphia towards the third week of June. During peak season, containers will also arrive in the port of Philadelphia with more-or-less the same timing as the first conventional vessel. By this time, Star Ruby and Cara-Cara Oranges will also start be available.
“This year we’re expecting some of the most top quality and excellent eating quality fruit we’ve seen in recent years,” said Suhanra Conradie, CEO of Summer Citrus from South Africa. “The timing of the 2020 harvest is aligning with the recent increase in demand of citrus due to COVID-19 while offering some of the best in season citrus from South Africa.”
While challenges within the international supply chain are inevitable, the group from South Africa manages supply based on demand with its impressive team of growers, importers, local and global officials as well as logistics and marketing teams.
“In response to our retail partners’ needs based on evolving consumer behaviors, our group is at the ready to be a trusted supplier of citrus starting towards end of May through October,” said Conradie.
On Wednesday, May 27th, Suhanra Conradie will be a featured speaker during PMA’s Virtual Town Hall and will provide an update on the current citrus market and upcoming summer season.
For more information and to stay up-to-date on citrus from South Africa, subscribe to the newsletter by filling outthis form or for more information, please visitwww.summercitrus.com.
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About Summer Citrus from South Africa (SCSA)
Summer Citrus from South Africa represents a group of South African citrus growers who consolidate their logistics, marketing and sales efforts to bring the finest citrus fruit to market during the U.S. summer season. Established in 1999 and re-branded for expanded marketing efforts in 2016, the group provides Navels, Midknights, East Peelers, Star Ruby Grapefruit and Cara-Cara oranges for the U.S. market. For more information about Summer Citrus from South Africa, visitwww.summercitrus.com and visit the brand’sFacebook,Instagram andTwitter pages.
The export and import forecast for the 2020 financial year due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has been revised downward by the USDA.
The forecast also reports China has told state-owned agricultural companies to suspend purchases and cancel orders as tensions flare with the U.S. over the situation in Hong Kong. The report by the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) said: “The COVID-19 outbreak has created a shock to world economies that will cause an unusually high level of uncertainty for the foreseeable future.”
The organizations cut the U.S. agricultural export forecast for the 2020 financial year ending Sept. 30 to $135.5 billion, down $3 billion from the February forecast. This is primarily due to reductions in bulk commodities including soybeans, cotton, corn, and wheat.
The forecast for horticultural exports is unchanged at $35.5 billion. Whole and processed tree nuts are unchanged at $9.1 billion, with most shipments destined for Europe and Asia.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are steady at US $7.1 billion on stable shipments to top markets Canada and Mexico. Processed fruits and vegetables are unchanged at$7 billion on steady shipments to Canada.
Meanwhile, U.S. agricultural imports in 2020 are projected at $130.2 billion, down $2.3 billion from the February forecast. This decline is primarily driven by expected decreases in imports of horticultural products.
The forecasts for imports of fresh fruit and vegetables are reduced by $500 million and $200 million respectively, as these perishable products are vulnerable to spoilage when there are delays in the supply chain.
It said these delays are “due to precautionary steps having been added to the production and transportation processes and reductions in the availability of labor.”
The export and import figures, if realized, would mean the U.S. would have its smallest positive trade balances in years, just $6.3 billion. By comparison, in 2014 the country exported $152.3 billion and imported$109.3 billion of agricultural products, resulting in a positive trade balance of $43.1 billion.
A record 34.1 million(42-pound) bushels of fresh market apples remained in storage to be shipped on June 1 — a 23 percent increase from a year ago.
The final MarketNews storage report of the season by the U.S. Apple Association also showed processing apples still in storage were 28 percent more than the June 1, 2019 report, with 13.8 million pounds.
At 47.9 million bushels, the overall fresh and processing apples still in storage on June 1 was a record, 24 percent over last season at the same time and 26 percent more than the five-year average.
The association will resume its monthly storage report in November, with numbers on the new crop.
Washington has 5.9 million fresh-market bushels in regular storage and 29.2 million bushels in controlled-atmosphere on June 1.
The leading fresh-market apples in storage on June 1 were:
Tridge, a global sourcing and market intelligence hub for food buyers and suppliers, has reported the latest market trends affecting the food and agriculture sector. This week the biggest news relates to a surge in demand for Mexican strawberries, which has increased its export rates by 11% since April.
In comparison to this time last year (April – June), the demand for the product in the global market has risen significantly. North America, for example, has increased its import rate for Mexican strawberries by 23%.
A similar trend has been witnessed for Mexican bananas. Despite prolonged lockdown in the country, exports for bananas have increased by 8% compared to 2019, with North America and Europe being the main export destinations.
However, Middle Eastern countries have experienced a decline in fruit imports from Mexico. This is due to a lack of air freight and trade restrictions across borders, resulting from the impacts of Covid-19.
Hoshik Shin, founder and CEO at Tridge, said: “While the impacts of Covid-19 are still impacting trade, our workforce has observed significant increases in the demand for fruits from European and North American importers.
“Weather conditions and labour shortages have affected harvest yields for some producers, meaning that importers will be looking for alternative suppliers. Using an online sourcing and trading platform such as Tridge will give buyers more options when looking for quality products at good prices.”
About Tridge
Tridge is a global trade ecosystem where buyers and suppliers of agricultural and food products can find everything they need to understand their markets with just a simple search. Using a combination of the latest digital technology and the latest insights gathered through a human network, they provide a very powerful global-scale platform for buyers and suppliers to connect and do business with each other more confidently.
Using a global network covering over 150 countries worldwide, Tridge has developed a comprehensive data set of 300,000,000+ prices and 1,600,000,000+ trade data points covering 1000+ items in the agriculture and food sector, and successfully facilitates the B2B and B2C trading of these items. Tridge aims to achieve digitalisation and globalisation of the trade industry.
Modern popular models of heavy trucks are shades of blue in a row on a truck stop for drivers’ rest and refueling of vehicles for the further movement for delivery commercial goods in accordance with the schedule drawn up and route
DAT Solutions, a North American online freight marketplace entered an agreement to acquire Freight Market Intelligence Consortium (FMIC) from Chainalytics Inc.
“FMIC is a subscription-based benchmarking and analysis service that leverages almost $50 billion in actual freight transactions from almost 200 companies across manufacturing, retail, wholesale and third-party logistics,” according to a news release.
DAT has $118 billion worth of global shipment data across multiple transportation modes and real-time spot-market transaction pricing. Combining this with FMIC’s intelligence and rate modeling expertise, the company will be able to develop new products, services and insights.
“More than a thousand shippers, brokers and carriers from across the globe directly contributing rates uniquely positions DAT to deliver the only near real-time view into freight pricing and global supply chain in North America. This gives our customers unrivaled logistics insight and a stunning 360-degree view of the entire supply chain” Claude Pumilia, DAT president and CEO, said in the release.
Benefits of the acquisition include a source for global freight intelligence, transportation and market intelligence solutions, access to global market analytics, a team of market experts and model-based benchmarking techniques for transportation markets.
“The combination of FMIC’s contract rate benchmarking and analytics with DAT’s spot-market data and freight matching will provide unparalleled capabilities for analytics and forecasting on the global freight and supply chain markets,” Gary Girotti, Chainalytics executive vice president of supply chain intelligence and technology products.
Moving into summer the focus on produce trucking tends to be with hot weather items such as cherries, other stone fruit, and salad items. Still there are a good amount of “cold” weather potatoes still being shipped, although almost entire from 5 states.
Idaho is shipping over 1800 truck load equivalents per weeks, while the other four shipping areas are shipping a little over 1600 truck loads weekly combined: San Luis Valley, Colorado, 595; Kern District, California, 420; Columbia Basin in Washington and adjacent Umatilla Basin in Oregon, about 400 but in a seasonal decline; and finally, Central Wisconsin about 200 and also in a seasonal decline.
With a total volume of 3.9 billion pounds, Idaho accounts for 37.5 percent of the total supply, with Colorado, 15.3 percent; Canada 10 percent; Washington 7 percent; Wisconsin 6.3 percent; and Florida with 4.8 percent. All these regions make 80 percent of the total market supply. Canada has had explosive growth in potato shipments. Last year this region only supplied 77 million pounds compared to the 387 million in 2020.
San Luis Valley potatoes – grossing about $2200 to Chicago.
Twin Falls potatoes – grossing about $5600 to New York City.
When COVID-19 hit a lot of businesses switched from restaurants and other foodservice to retail. What are your biggest challenges making the transition from a logistics stand point?
When the pandemic hit, ALC was very busy and actually increased our business because we are deeply imbedded in the food and beverage space. Our customers were required to help feed even more people than ever before. Our foodservice businesses were of course more stressed as restaurants, schools and big venues were closed or cancelled, so we helped by working on other strategies with our customers and worked to pivot into retail whenever possible.
2. How much of your perishable freight is handled by owner-operators and small fleets and do you see this changing at all?
We have a mix of owner-operators and smaller fleets as well as some of the biggest trucking names in the produce industry hauling loads for Allen Lund Company. In order to service our clients, we need all of our carrier relationships to work together to solve the complex transportation issues for our shipper clients. In general, the trucking industry is made up of wonderful people that follow the American dream of owning their own businesses and I hope that doesn’t change. The one thing I hope people realized through this crisis is that all of the drivers across the U.S. have kept the flow of goods moving – without these drivers this pandemic would have been much worse – so thanks again to all those drivers out there!
3. What trends do you see in the coming months regarding truck and driver availability, as well as freight rates?
Well with what’s going on in the economy we should not see a driver shortage in the near term. We do not see the purchasing of many trucks right now, as class 8 sales are way down. Freight rates have been all over the place this year, and we all want to make sure the trucking companies stay in business and are treated fairly. However, we do live in a supply demand market – which can really be difficult to maneuver through during these major disruptions. Overall we see this year as a roller coaster, but feel truck rates will be going up later in the year and into next year as we hope the economy gets back on its feet.
4. What are the biggest changes you have seen in recent years making trucking more efficient such a communication, dock scheduling, etc.
You know everyone is talking about data, but truly accurate data that tells a good story is still a few miles away. We all like getting packages in just a few days so the systems to make that happen will require trucking to continue to change, but that change will be substantial as we work out all the kinks. We need all of our carriers to get on a network of some sort so they can all play in the successes of this new market we are entering in. It’s funny that you mention dock scheduling as our AlchemyTMS has solved major issues for our customers – carriers and shippers with that software module. The more we can automate systems that help our carriers and shippers alike, less manpower and frustration exists – which is a great thing. We have spent a lot of time and money to develop systems to make sure our customers get their products to market safely, secured and on time.
Bob Rose is Vice President, National Produce Sales, for the Allen Lund Company. While ALC is based in LaCanada, CA, Bob is based in the San Francisco office and has been with company 34 years.
Allen Lund Company is a national third-party transportation broker with nationwide offices and over 500 employees working with shippers and carriers across the nation to arrange for dry, refrigerated (specializing in produce), and flatbed freight. Additionally, the Allen Lund Company has a Logistics & Software division, ALC Logistics, as well as an International division.
California grape shipments have been underway for about three weeks out of the desert area of the Coachella Valley, but that is minor compared to what lies ahead. As the desert volume winds down in early July, the Arvin district gets underway near Bakersfield, followed by the primary loadings in the central San Joaquin Valley.
The 2020 forecast is for 106.5 million boxes, which is up on 2019’s 104.8m boxes, but below the three-year average of 109.5 million boxes.
Availability from the main growing region in California, the Central Valley, will crank up in mid-July.
Meanwhile, the grape season in Mexico will soon be winding down, with overall shipments to be off about 20 percent from last year with estimates for 2020 at 19.7 million boxes.
There was an overlap of shipments from Mexico and the early district in Coachella.
The Philadelphia Regioanl Port Authority reports refrigerated cargo trade into the Delaware River increased by 9 percent last year. Now operating with the PhilaPort name, the organization recently released its latest trade statistics.
The Delaware River ports handled fresh fruit worth $3.6 billion in 2019. Philadelphia has its own seaport infrastructure. But the port of Wilmington, DE, and New Jersey Delaware River port facilities substantially add to the overall trade numbers of river trade totals.
The Delaware River ports in 2019 received a total of 4 metric tons of refrigerated cargo. Of this total, bananas contributed 47 percent of the tonnage.
Pineapples, which typically arrive with bananas on containerized cargo ships, accounted for 14 percent of the tonnage. Citrus fruit accounted for 6 percent of the river’s tonnage, while grapes and melons each represented 4 percent of tonnage.
Refrigerated meats accounted for 7 percent and “other” commodities filled the total tonnage, with 18 percent.
Reefer containers brought 28 percent of the river’s total cargo tonnage, despite the presence of much heavier items like dry containers (31 percent) and liquid bulk (20 percent).
The river’s container trade has grown by an average of 12 percent per year since 2012. The reefer container cargo growth shot from 88,461 20-foot equivalent units in 2012 to 219,619 in 2019.
U.S. foodservice business in April plunged because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which apparently contributed to a steep fall in U.S. fruit and vegetable imports.
U.S. imports of fresh vegetables in April were $770.2 million, down 25 percent from March and off 6.5percent from April 2019, according to the USDA..
Imports of fruit (both fresh and frozen) in April were $1.27 billion, off 23 percent from March and down 17 percent from April 2019.
By commodity, imports of U.S. fresh produce in April, with percent change from April 2019, were:
Berries (excluding strawberries: $284.9 million, up 3 percent;
