No longer dependent on other avocado nurseries to source its trees, a major South African grower is planning to expand its production at a substantial rate over the coming years.

Limpopo-headquartered ZZ2 currently has around 700 hectares of planted farms with two-thirds of the trees producing fruit, but is set to plant at a rate of 100-150 hectares per year due to 'insatiable' demand.

"At the same time we are entering into a few joint ventures with communities around us - we will be helping them to plant avocados and that will also probably grow at the same rate," marketing manager Clive Garrett said.

The representative said the company's rapid growth was possible as the company now had its own nursery, producing some 100,000 trees annually.

"The big bottleneck to expanding production in South Africa in the past has been the lack of trees," he said.

"There have only ever been three very large avocado nurseries and you’ve generally waited up to two years to get trees in South Africa, and that’s been a limiting factor on the growth.

"We took the decision about four or five years ago to start our own nursery, which has been successful, and we are expanding it at the moment to be able to double our capacity. That will give us the ability to be less reliant on outside nurseries."

Currently 55-60% of the crop relates to Hass varieties, starting with the early Maluma and ending with the late Lamb. The rest are green-skinned cultivars like Ryan and Pinkerton.

However, going forward Garrett said the focus would be on Hass.

"What we’ve seen is the export markets like Europe, and even the Far East, are more Hass-based, so we would plant the Hass crop for the export market and probably plant green-skinned for the local market," he said.

He said the industry was hard at work to open the U.S. and Chinese markets, and expected them both to grant access within the next three years.

"I think for the foreseeable future Europe will still be the traditional market for us, but there's big potential in the Far East," he said.

He added access to the Japanese market was 'not far off', but said the travel time may cause problems for South African shippers.

As part of its social responsibility practices, ZZ2 has also formed a joint venture with BioBee in a bid to boost biological controls and reduce pesticide usage.

"We're also trying to substitute, for instance, fertilizers with compost," he said.

"We don't ever plan to be organic, but we're trying to look after the resources that we’ve got. We know that there are generations coming after us."

'Excellent' season so far

As for the current export season which is roughly half-way through, Garrett said ZZ2 had so far enjoyed a very stong campaign into Europe.

"We pushed quite hard in the early season, as we had a very hot summer and out fruit ripened up a little bit earlier," he said.

"So we pushed hard to get our fruit off and into Europe before big flood from Peru arrived, so we’ve had an excellent season."

He added the depreciation of the South African rand had also played in the export industry's favor.

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