Juicy fruit: South Africa’s plums blossom into big business

In South Africa, the journey for many plums starts in the picturesque Franschhoek Valley in the Western Cape, where the climate is well-suited for growing the stone fruit.

“We’ve got a slightly cooler summer than the rest of the area,” explains Jan Hoon Marketing Manager at Franschhoek Fruit Packers. “Plums prefer cooler temperatures during the growing area of the plum, from after flowering until harvesting. So the time of the fruit on the tree is more, compared to other areas.”

And it is plums that are the most important stone fruit to the South African economy, making up a bigger share of both production and exports than peaches and apricots. According to horticultural experts Hortgro, almost 16 million cartons of stone fruit were exported during the 2013-14 season, of which 10.5 million cartons were plums.

Tight timing

But Hoon is also clear that the current established markets will continue to be important for the South African stone fruit industry.

“Our advantage is that we are almost 10 days quicker on transit time from South Africa into the European markets so in general in the stone fruit season in we produce about 60/70% of the out of season stone fruit production for Europe,” he explains. “We need to be better than our competition, which is mainly South America, so we just need to outperform them and deliver better quality for the markets.”

More from Marketplace Africa
Read this: Sweet turnaround for Uganda’s sugar kings
Read this: African sushi hits Japan

CNN