PROCESSING & MARKETING
Bright future ahead AU ST RA L I A N P R EM I U M D R I ED F R U I TS
The upcoming season is offering optimism for most growers, with better than average bunch counts on vines. Each year the new varieties (Carina/ Sunmuscat/Sunglo) deliver a higher percentage of the crop as compared to Thompsons, which will continue in 2022. The growing season for most growers has been very good, with excellent winter and spring rainfall, along with good spells of dry heat in the lead up to summer. Good prices for temporary water should also mean that shortcuts in watering the vines have been avoided. Our increasing base of growers in South Australia had to deal with some scary storm activity that produced isolated areas of hail in late 2021, but all reports are that their vineyards escaped any major losses. Therefore, at the time of writing this article, we are set up for a decent 2022 harvest, as long as Mother Nature stays kind to us. APDF volumes will increase in 2022, with some of our vineyard developments starting to produce their first and second crops this season. We are hoping for a 15-20 per cent increase in volume from 2021 that will help drive efficiencies through the increasing factory costs. We should now see steady growth over the next four to five years as our volumes grow to 10,000-plus tonnes, making the company a processor of global scale and enabling processing to continue all year round. Most people in the industry would have heard that we purchased some assets from Murray River Organics (MRO) in 2021.
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The purchase of the MRO processing facility has enabled us to upgrade elements of the APDF factory that were starting to look tired after 12 seasons of processing. It’s extremely important that APDF continues to invest in the processing equipment to keep us at the forefront of quality finished products, which much of this equipment will allow us to do. We also are delighted to have secured the 100-acre vineyard next to our factory. Our grower liaison Larry Dichiera is managing the vineyard and has already made some huge improvements to make the property a showpiece for our business that visitors to our factory will be able to view as part of a full process tour. Larry will also be able to host grower field events at the property in coming years. This Wargan vineyard will be a tremendous asset to work with our growers on vineyard training and trials going forward. We held a very successful grower dinner in December at Willow and Ivie, attended by 120 people. It was an amazing social evening where we were able to give an update to growers on APDF’s progress and, more importantly, enhance the community spirit and positivity we are excited to see build again with our dried fruit industries resurgence. For the first time in a long time, the dried fruit industry is going into a period of growth, which is a sign that much of the hard work done to mechanise the industry is starting to pay off. Having so many dried fruit industry people in one room, enjoying a social event and talking positively about the industry was a real highlight for many of our APDF team. It fills us with confidence that the future for our
historic industry is bright and one we are looking forward to. We want to support and promote the implementation of the digital spray diaries that the industry is hoping to have in place for the 2023 crop. This will mean we are hoping to roll out the software and training after the 2022 harvest is complete. APDF has been involved with this thorough process with Anne Mansell and Stuart Putland at DFA, and we are confident that the spray diary will be a great asset to growers and the industry. We are always under pressure from major customers to have strict compliance and governance with chemical spray records, so this professional upgrade for the dried fruit industry will be another credible step ahead for Australian dried grape growers. We know this will be a great asset to us all, so please be ready to implement this process in the second half of 2022. v Enquiries: Grower liaison officer Larry Dichiera, larry@apdf.com.au 0488 199 221
