Australian avocados – August 2021
By Jen Scoular
We know the Australian avocado market is becomingly increasingly full so last week we asked John Tyas, the CEO of Australian Avocados, to dial in for our inaugural online “morning tea” event. We set up this webinar for growers, offering the opportunity to hear from us, or a guest, and catch up on avocado news with their morning cup of tea. John talked about the very high volumes in the Australian market, the much lower than normal pricing, and the challenges he foresees for the season ahead. It was great to have John share his view, although he wasn’t able to add much optimism to what we are hearing from our exporters about the Australian market.
The idea for the webinar came from an initiative hosted by Pāmu, who invited me to be their guest on their morning tea webinar a few months ago. Nearly 80 growers and stakeholders joined our 20 minute zoom morning tea session last Thursday, and we received great feedback therefore we look forward to hosting more of them on a regular basis.
The new season has certainly opened with a large flow of avocados onto New Zealand retail shelves. A combination of some good maturity on coastal, island and new orchards, plus the expectation of good returns early in the season and growers knowing it will be a tough year ahead therefore wanting to get their fruit off early, has resulted in nearly twice as many trays per week being harvested over July than we would normally see.
The New Zealand marketer group has increased their calls to be held weekly to help understand the flow, and find ways to ensure that flow of fruit was mirrored by increased demand from consumers. Hopefully you will have seen the television commercial playing – starring our own Sarah Sorensen and her family.
