Pomegranate production in Israel is divided into two seasons: the season for the early varieties and the main season which produces the Wonderful variety.
The early season, which produces varieties such as Acco and Emek, is wrapping up now and the season for the Wonderful variety will begin this month. Yoav Nakash says: “Our early season begins right when Peru ends their season, so we continue their supply. Our early variety season went really well and we managed to export about 1500 tons. We started harvesting about two weeks late, halfway through August instead of at the beginning of the month, due to some weather issues but fortunately this didn’t affect the quality or the quantity of the harvest. The price this year was comparable with last year in Euros but due to changes in the conversion rate between the Euro and the Israeli Shekel, our growers are seeing lower returns even though the prices have stayed the same.”
The late variety season will begin in a matter of weeks, and the product is looking good so far. Yoav says: “The color of the product is looking really good right now. For good color on pomegranates you need high temperatures during the day and low temperatures at night, which is what we have been experiencing here in Israel these past few months.”
"The weather has a big impact on production since all the pomegranates are grown in open fields. Yoav explains: “This year’s expected volumes for the Wonderful variety are around 5000 tons, which is up about 20% from last year. The weather last year did some damage to the crop and we ended up with lower quantities and larger sizes. This year’s predicted volumes are much higher and we will have sizes ranging from 300 grams to 1 kilo per unit. In Europe, the 400-500 gram size is the most popular, and other markets prefer the larger 1 kilo sizes, so it is nice that we are able to supply a good range of sizes.”
Galil exports their pomegranates mostly to Europe, but also works with the Far East, and Canadian markets. “We supply to almost every supermarket in Germany and our main export market is Europe in general. We work with the UK and have clients in France, Italy, and even Spain once their local season ends. This means that we have to ensure that our product lives up to the standards set by these markets, and we have all the certificates we need to be able to sell in Europe,” Yoav says.
The markets that are located further away benefit from the company’s large production volumes of the Wonderful variety: “The Wonderful is a very strong variety and while we harvest them in October we can continue to sell them through March at the latest. This means that we are able to export the product to markets that are further away because they can easily withstand the transit times.” Yoav continues: “Our company produces probably around 40% of all of Israel’s exported pomegranates. This year we have started working with some new growers and we now work with approximately 20 growers for our pomegranates. We always want to improve our product and find better varieties so that our growers can get the best returns.”
The company works with whole pomegranates, but also with arils and juice production. “The pomegranate demand has been increasing a lot in the past few years, especially for the juice and the arils. The aril industry is difficult because of issues with the shelf-life, though, and we have to ship the whole fruit to factories close to the final selling-destination. The moment that the pomegranate is opened up, the shelf-life of the arils decreases exponentially, so the logistics need to be very efficient and there is no room for mistakes there.
Pomegranates are very healthy but they aren’t very user-friendly, like the apples are for example. You can’t just bite into them and it takes some effort to get to the arils – this is why the aril industry and the juice industry are seeing so much growth,” Yoav concludes.
