While it's still early days for this season's mango crop, an industry leader is hopeful prices will reflect the work that growers do and be a lot higher this year compared to last year.
Australian Mango Industry Association AMIA chairman Ben Martin is also hoping mango exports return to a pre-Covid high of 12 per cent.
"The crop is still in the growing phase at the moment so there's some orchards with good flowering out and other orchards with only 20 to 30 per cent flowering out, but it's off to a good start," he said."
A grower from Bowen, Mr Martin said last year was one of the worst seasons some growers have ever had for prices.
"It was absolutely terrible," he said.
"We're hoping for a good season to be spread out and growers get a favourable return, that they get paid for the work that they do.
"A good price varies between varieties and growing regions, but anything under $3 a mango retail really isn't giving much profit back to the grower.
"Last year, you would have seen a lot of mangoes being sold for $1 to $1.50 which is to the growers' detriment."
Mr Martin said extremely high input costs on top of extremely low prices had also hurt a lot of growers.
He said it also did not help that last year's crop was quite a large yield in volume with just over 10 million trays of mangoes produced.
"Historically with mangoes, you will see a smaller yield after a larger year as the trees won't back up for a second big crop," he said.
"I am not saying it won't (be higher than 10 million trays), but I'd be extremely surprised if it went anywhere near that figure from last year."
Mr Martin said a drop in exports from about 12 per cent down to six per cent was another reason for low returns.
He said the decrease was due to restrictions in air flights during Covid and the high cost of air freight, but he was optimistic that with more flights and the cost of air freight coming down that mango exports to places like New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore would pick up.
In Australia, there are about 400 mango growers with the majority from Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Mr Martin said consumers could expect to to see mangoes on supermarket shelves around September.
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Judith Maizey
Judith Maizey has worked as a journalist and communications specialist for more than 30 years throughout Queensland and NSW. Working for Queensland Country Life, she is always up for a chat and loves a good story. Contact 0417 546 616. E: judith.maizey@queenslandcountrylife.com.au
Judith Maizey has worked as a journalist and communications specialist for more than 30 years throughout Queensland and NSW. Working for Queensland Country Life, she is always up for a chat and loves a good story. Contact 0417 546 616. E: judith.maizey@queenslandcountrylife.com.au
