The well-established South African farming company ZZ2 is one of the largest producers of avocados, but that's not the only thing in their repertoire.

Clive Garrett, marketing manager at ZZ2, told FreshFruitPortal.com that the company is the single largest producer of avocados in South Africa, although they don't export most of the fruit, and also holds 50% of the market share for tomatoes in the country, all of them for local consumption.

The proud supplier and exporter, Garrett explains, has been urging the South African government to open new export markets for some time. The process has been slow, due to regulatory and phytosanitary requirements, but he noted there's a potential payoff: South Africa is geographically closer to China than Peru, its main competitor in the avocado market.

Photo courtesy of ZZ2

"It's going to benefit us that we established a new market," Garrett added. "We see great opportunities going to China in that, you know, quicker, quicker transit route for us and a very big market that can expand quite rapidly once people get used to eating avocados." 

The company partnered with Core Fruit, which has years of experience exporting South African citrus and pome fruit to China.

"They handled all the logistics for us, all the paperwork for us, and it was a fairly seamless process for them to swap citrus for avocados or swap apples and pears for avocados because they already understood the market," Garrett explained. "They already had contacts in China and I must admit it worked very well."

The company sent four containers of the Hass avocado into China, 80 tons of avocados.

Photo courtesy of ZZ2

When asked whether other commodities are being considered for market access to China, Garrett said stone fruit is a current priority, but the company is particularly focused on gaining approval for cherries.

"ZZ2 is in a very unique position, we've got cherries in the month of October when there are very few cherries anywhere in the world," Garrett explained. "We come in after Canada, but before Chile starts, so there's a great demand for cherries in China and we're going to have a really unique window of opportunity." 

For now, the company remains focused on avocados. "We're currently working obviously with, with avocado still, we've still got quite a lot of of avocados, we come in slightly earlier than Peru does because we're in a bit of a unique area in South Africa, so we push very hard early season, and then we sit back until we see volumes from Peru decline, and then we'll push again with the avocados." 

He added that the company is also busy with Medjool dates and tomatoes, which he described as a never-ending business.