Sunraysia is known for its hot summers and that’s what makes it an ideal location to produce golden dried grapes, but 2022 has been a horror season for the industry.
Key points:
- Australian Premium Dried Fruits has up to 16 dehydrators running to dry grape varieties down to the required 13 per cent moisture level
- The company has 5,000 tonnes to dehydrate and expects this work will continue into December
- New varieties like Sunmuscat, Sunglo and Carina currants have more robust characteristics, making them more salvageable than other grapes
Australian Premium Dried Fruits chief executive Craig Greenwood says it’s an unprecedented season and the worst he can remember in 20 years.
“The rain this year just didn’t stop,” he said.
“It just kept raining every week or 10 days and the fruit never got a chance to dry.
“So in the end, the growers just had to harvest it at whatever moisture it was to get it off before it went rotten and that’s what we’re dealing with now.”
The company has received 5,000 tonnes of fruit from growers that needs to be dehydrated to bring the moisture levels down to 13 per cent.
“It’s low-grade, it’s sticky and once it’s processed, it still turns out OK. But it’s taking a lot more effort than normal,” Mr Greenwood said.
It takes an hour of dehydration to reduce the moisture in the fruit by one percentage point.
In past years that meant each load would take five or six hours to dehydrate. But this season it’s taking a couple of days.
The company has up to 16 static dehydrator units running, which run on gas, and Mr Greenwood says this has been challenging to source too.
“We tend to use 500-litre gas bottles — you need four per static dehydrator and there’s a shortage,” he said.
“So we were really limited in what we could do at the start of the season just because of gas bottles, let alone gas supply.
“Then we’ve had issues with gas supply at times with trucks not coming to Mildura with the gas to fill up their reserves.”
New varieties make a difference
Mr Greenwood said the new dried grape varieties, like Sunmuscat, Sunglo and Carina currants, have been performed better than the older Thompson sultana.
“In 2011, we had storms and severe flooding and there were crop losses, but since then we’ve changed to more robust varieties that are better at handling the weather,” he said.
While darker brown dried grapes don’t attract the same premiums as golden fruit, Mr Greenwood says there is still a market for what is produced this season.
“Predominantly, all the fruit is going into domestic market lower-grade products this year,” he said.
But some dried grapes have still been sent to export markets.
“Luckily, about 10 per cent of our intake was at a decent standard that we were able to just trickle some fruit into export markets and keep them open for next year,” Mr Greenwood said.