Summer Citrus from South Africa is on its way!
Our first conventional vessel is scheduled to arrive mid-month! Watch the Coldstream loading in Capetown and experience first-hand how our operation works.
“I love it when a plan comes together!”
That’s exactly how we feel once the season kicks off and we see our shipping program being executed as planned. We started working on the 2022 season immediately after the last season closed as our longer-term commitments with service providers, ports and bilateral entities need to be booked far in advance.
Our sophisticated business model is rooted in managing supply and demand. The South African product is distributed to a selected group of importers and we rely on their input to start the initial planning for each season. It takes careful planning and collaboration to effectively put together a program like this.
Year-to-date, our initial shipping program, and volumes are on-par with what we expected. We plan to ship +/- 100,000 pallets to the U.S., and overall we are very comfortable with the pre-season planning in place and will adjust if needed.
Based on the demand of the market, Easy Peelers are now the biggest portion of our product offering, accounting for almost 50% of planned shipments. This is followed by 45% of Oranges (starting with mainly Navels, some Cara Cara’s, and ultimately Midknights) and the remailing Star Ruby.
Conventional Vessel
Our first conventional vessel, The Coldstream (3900 pallets), will arrive in mid-June. The 2nd vessel, The Elvira (4,700 pallets), will arrive the following week. The 3rd vessel, The Swedish Stream (5,700 pallets + some containers on deck) will arrive just after the 4th of July.
With these vessels already in the pipeline, we have now packed almost 15% of our estimated volumes. From there, we will move into weekly arrivals and could load between 16-18 conventional vessels.
Container Vessels
Due to logistics and supply-chain challenges, we are unable to ship containers directly to Packer Avenue, Philadelphia, PA. This would have accounted for almost 30% of shipments for the season.
To balance this out, we will be loading a few additional conventional vessels with containers from time to time. These will be shipped via Newark.
Additionally, some of the larger importers will be adding the Port of Savannah GA, as the point of entry for containers.
Overall, the quality of the fruit is looking really good as importers anxiously await the arrival of the first conventional vessel and containers. Stay tuned, as will share a similar video of the arrival of the Coldstream, in conjunction with our U.S. counterparts.
Thank you for the continued support, and please connect with our importer and exporter partners to confirm your supply of summer citrus from South Africa – today!
Suhanra Conradie
CEO – Summer Citrus from South Africa
suhanra@summercitrus.com
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