Israel’s mango export season has just started with good early demand from Europe. Early indications are that there will be about 15% fewer mangoes harvested in Israel compared to last year.
According to Ayelet Shuer, manager at the Israeli packing company Bustan Fruit, they have packed their first container for France this week. “We have just started packing for export. There are no issues in terms of weather with the mango quality looking good.”
Bustan Fruit focus on packing fruit like mangoes and avocados and citrus during the counter season. Shuer says they have mostly been packing for the local market. “We have just started packing mainly for the local market. We packed the coloured early mango fruit called Shelly and Tali. At the end of this week we are sending our first container to France. We also supply Tesco in England as well as to Germany and all over Europe.”
As a key pack house for many producers in Israel Shuer says they are really focused on packing the best quality in premium packaging. This is to attract the best prices, because it is expensive to farm in Israel. “Overall the quality is very good this year. There was no disaster everything is good so far. We are only at the beginning of the season. We do very strict picking with colour and size. From next week we will start in all earnest with picking and packing for the export season. We have orders and good demand from our export markets. I hope we will do well because we need to pack correctly and have to be on time with the orders. So far it seems nice. We are trying to make it premium packing to offer nice quality. We hope that this will affect the price positively. We only deal with packing where we try to do the best packing that we can. Quality is very important,” emphasises Shuer.
