Coming off a record year, California’s table grape production is already off to a fast start again, according to growers and shippers in the Coachella Valley.
“We’re two weeks early,” Nick Bozick, president of Mecca, Calif.-based Richard Bagdasarian Inc., said April 12. The desert grape deal typically doesn’t get underway until about May 1, concluding in mid-July. Other growers estimated their crop was similarly early. Shipments began in earnest in the last week of April.
Suppliers said their product would hit the market at a good time, too, with Chilean shipments concluded April 10. Those suppliers said the last of Chilean product, from a practical standpoint, would be cleared out by early May, just in time for their first shipments.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 8.2-kilogram containers of bagged thompson seedless grapes from Chile were $26-28 f.o.b. for extra-large; $24-26, large; and $22-24, medium, as of April 18. A year earlier, the same product from Chile was $20-22, extra-large; $18-20, large; and $14-16, medium.
Most growers planned to hit the markets with perlettes, then move into flames and scarlet royals, blacks and sugraones. Anticipated volume from the desert is 6 million to 7 million cartons, grower-shippers said. Growing conditions have been ideal, they added.
California logged a record year for table grape production in 2013, according to the Fresno-based California Table Grape Commission. California shipped a record volume of 117.4 million boxes (116.2 19-pound box equivalents), with a total crop value of $1.7 billion, the commission reported. The desert season kicks off the state’s production year, which runs through February. The commission said California produces 99% of the commercial fresh grapes grown in the U.S. “Over the past 10 years the volume has significantly increased,” Kathleen Nave, the commission’s president, said in a news release.