South Africa fresh produce export calendar

Roughly April to October, which is the single largest thing South Africa ships. Navels open the season and Valencias carry the second half of it.

Citrus peak is also when Durban and Cape Town are at their most congested and reefer equipment is at its tightest. The harvest is predictable and so is the shortage that goes with it — treat a rolled booking in July as a likely event rather than an exception.

Roughly March to September. South African easy-peelers have grown faster than any other part of its citrus basket, driven by European retail moving away from loose oranges.

They ship at the front of the citrus season, ahead of the Valencia volume, which means they are on the water in the weeks before the worst of the port congestion rather than during it.

Roughly March to August, out of Limpopo and Mpumalanga. South Africa is the Southern Hemisphere origin serving a shrinking but stubborn Northern Hemisphere grapefruit demand.

Grapefruit is the most chilling-tolerant citrus on this page and travels comfortably, which is why the trade survived as the growing regions contracted. It is also subject to cold sterilisation requirements into the EU — a mandated in-transit temperature regime, not a recommendation, and a container that breaches it is rejected at arrival.

Roughly March to September, on the same window as Argentina and into the same Northern Hemisphere gap.

South African lemon volume has grown substantially and much of it now goes east rather than to Europe. For a European buyer that makes availability in any given year a question about Middle Eastern and Asian demand as much as about the harvest.

Roughly December to April, out of the Hex River valley and the Orange River region, shipping mainly through Cape Town.

This is the window where Cape Town’s wind becomes a commercial problem. High-wind days halt crane work and vessels queue, and it happens in exactly the months the grapes are moving — seasonal and recurring rather than exceptional, and it delays a shipment before the ETA has any reason to move.

Roughly February to July out of the Western Cape, shipping from storage well past the harvest.

South African apples reach Europe in about half the transit a Chilean container needs, which changes the arithmetic on a stored crop: the same fruit arrives with more life in hand for less freight, and that is most of why the UK trade leans this way.

Roughly January to June, with the apple programme. Forelle is the variety South Africa is known for and it is largely a European trade.

Pears are less tolerant than apples of temperature drift, and they ripen at destination on the importer’s schedule — so what a container’s reefer actually did on the voyage is worth more than what the schedule said it would.

Roughly March to September out of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, sitting almost exactly on top of the Peruvian window.

That overlap is the useful fact. South Africa reaches Europe in roughly two thirds of the transit Peru needs, so in the months both are shipping the choice is between a cheaper origin and a fresher one — which is a genuine commercial decision rather than a default.

Roughly October to March out of the Western Cape, ahead of and overlapping the Chilean window.

Plums are picked firm and ripen at destination, so the variable that decides how a container lands is the ripeness it left at rather than the days it spent at sea. South Africa’s shorter voyage gives the buyer more room to get that wrong.