Summer sweetness: Oversupply of mangoes drives prices down across Australia

Mango growers are urging customers to celebrate the summer season by buying more fruit as a glut in supply has driven prices down.

Across the country, oversupply of mangoes has seen prices fall dramatically; the fruit is as low as $1.90 each in some stores.

Brett Kelly, managing director of Australian Mangues, said the low price was due to an overlap of supply from different regions. Northern Territory mangoes are normally picked first in late November, followed by Queensland in mid-December, then New South Wales and Western Australia.

According to Kelly, this year the NT crop came late, while the Queensland crop came early. "You have a cross of more mangoes hitting the markets at the same time, which puts a bit of pressure on prices," he said.

"There will be a huge amount of volume over the next few months, so consumers can get their mangoes and I know from experience that they will support Australian farmers - they work hard to produce the best mangoes in the world.

While this may seem like a bumper crop, Pia Piggott, associate horticulture analyst at RaboResearch, said it was only up 14% from last year. year before.

"But the supply over the last two weeks and next two weeks is 600,000 trays of mangoes per week," Piggott said. last year, there was only one week when there were 600,000."

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Mangos have actually seen a drop in production level since 2018, she said.

"It won't be not the greatest mango season we've ever seen,” Piggott said. "The 2018 season was a record season, with 83,000 tons of mangoes.

"Since then there has been a drop in production due to weather conditions. Last year, in particular, we saw a sharp drop in production volume.

"That's what makes it seem like there's a lot more supply - but this year won't compare to 2018."

Piggott said consumers would likely see low prices on mangoes until the first week of January, when the supply would start to drop.

"After that, the supply will decrease much more and this process will probably push the price up a little more", she said.

While this is good news for consumers, producers say they will struggle to make ends meet with the low price.

"There are many fruits which do not even arrive e not in the market, they end up in the juice markets, which is a very last resort because of the return growers get,” Paul Burke, managing director of N T Farmers, said.

"Our message would be: go get yourself a mango daiquiri tonight and support the little guys here."

Woolworths did not elaborate the increase in sales over the previous year, but a spokesperson said customers were buying mangoes in large numbers.

"Thanks to an abundance of premium mangoes at a great price this season, we've seen customers buy more than ever in recent weeks,” the spokesperson said.

“Last week , our customers won a record number of mangoes, and demand is expected to increase as Christmas approaches.

“Right now our growers are delivering large mangoes quality and we are working with them to offer great prices to help more Australians enjoy mangoes this summer. »