It was a big week for many reasons, two such reasons were large market volume and unseasonably warm weather in some parts of the country. The warmer weather came back to Sydney for round 2, and this saw an increase in demand at the back end of the week, coinciding with the October long weekend. Weather will normalise for the growing regions in the next 7-10 days, but warmer weather is already forecasted for 12-14th of October.

For many growers, they will be past the bulk of their 1111 crop in Woolgoolga, and pruning will be on the way; we expect this to cause fewer issues if this occurs in the last two weeks.

Strawberries have split on pricing on the East Coast Markets this week. The division in the price for new-season fruit vs. old-season fruit is significant on the market floors; however, supermarkets are expecting consistent supply for the next few weeks as we transition across. Whilst there is some new season production occurring, this volume is still insignificant to the fruit that is still coming out of Southeast Queensland despite storms and some quality issues starting to appear.

If you compare it to the peak of the season, we are significantly down for the past few weeks, and we expect this trend to continue over the next few weeks before we see VIC ramp up at the back end of October. Raspberries and Blackberries are also picking up significantly in the next few weeks as plants come to life in warmer-than-average conditions. Production is just starting up in Coffs Coast and Southeast Queensland. We will see prices start to slide back in the coming weeks and this will put extra pressure on other berry categories for sustained demand.