“Here at MSC we pride ourselves on flexibility and service with a human touch.”
– Ferdinando Cibelli, Senior Vice President North America Services, June 2023
Captain Ferdinando Cibelli, together with his team in Geneva and here in Cape Town, are the people that took us back to both sides of the Delaware river, offering a seasonal container service into the port of Philadelphia, PA. Philly is the place where we want to be with our product, as it is located within the richest consumer market in the Northeastern US, running from Maine to Washington DC. This area has a population of +/- 56M people and a GDP slightly bigger than Germany. Furthermore, most of our service providers and their facilities are situated close to the port in either the state of New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
The 2022 season was a record season for our group with the US market screaming for fruit and the demand of shipping opportunities exceeding the available supply! It became our number one priority to make sure we offer container shipments into Philadelphia, complementing our dedicated vessels, and from there onwards began our partnership with MSC. We are now in our second year of offering this seasonal service into Packer Avenue and our business is going well and according to plan!
For the 2024 season, we have gone into the marketplace with a similar figure than what was shipped in 2023, ±100 000 pallets. We have now packed ±45% of our estimated volume for the season. For our YTD packing volumes, our fruit basket consists of 43% Navel Oranges, 38% Easy Peelers, 14% Star Ruby Grapefruit and the balance Cara-Cara Oranges and a few seedless Lemons.
We are now entering the period where we will also start harvesting the later Mandarin varieties, to arrive from mid-August onwards. Overall, the quality is good and living up to the expectation of South African citrus, and all is going according to plan in the production area. As we operate in a Mediterranean climate, we are now in our peak rainfall season. We have had very good rainfall so far, but we also have beautiful sunshine filled days to pick, pack, and load our vessels with fruit.
If you are in need of citrus to round out your summer category sales, please connect with one of our familiar and seasoned importers.
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Proudly shipping and selling the world’s finest Summer Citrus,
Suhanra Conradie
CEO – Summer Citrus from South Africa
suhanra@summercitrus.com
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