Asian Citrus summer crop curtailed by canker

28th Jun 2013 10:12

Chinese plantation player Asian Citrus plucked slightly fewer oranges from its summer crop due to bad weather and virulent canker. The Aim-100 oranges and juice producer picked a crop of 57,367 tonnes of Summer Oranges, below its guidance of 58,600 tonnes given in March.This means the number of oranges sold will be around 10.2% lower than the previous year, as group annual production volume decreased from 243,421 to 218,600 tonnes in the current year, which management said was in line with expectations.Periods of heavy rainfall and typhoons at its Hepu plantation in Guangxi province in 2012 led to an extensive infection of citrus canker, which resulted in a significant volume of premature fruit drop in the summer crop.But Asian Citrus executive directors Tony Tong and his son Tommy Tong are confident the canker will be limited to the current year's summer crop and predicted that if the weather is not too bad then production volumes from Hepu will return to previously reported in the next financial year. The most recent winter orange update, in January, reported a crop yield 26.9% lower than the prior year's. Shares in Asian Citrus were unmoved at 23.5p on low volumes at 10:30 on Friday.OH