Pineapples going from strength to strength in north Qld

The annual pineapple field days were held in Rollingstone last week, attracting growers from across Qld, who discussed the future of the industry and challenges including over-supply.

Growcom chief advocate Rachel Mackenzie said while the number of growers had contracted over the past two decades, the industry’s footprint was expanding.

While Rollingstone used to be the northern-most growing point, Pinata Farms successfully began growing pineapples in Mareeba in the 1990s, and have since started growing near Darwin in the Northern Territory, with the first fruit hitting the market in 2015.

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Ms Mackenzie said historically the Sunshine Coast, Bundaberg and Maryborough were the better known areas.

“But then we have one of the big pineapple companies Pinata who established a farm up in Mareeba and even more recently they've got some farms up in the Northern Territory, so we're really heading north in a big way,” Ms Mackenzie said.

“Pineapples are a tropical fruit so it's logical to look at these tropical areas and I think there's really interesting opportunities in this space.”

Latest figures from the Hort Innovations Pineapple Fund Annual Report 2016/17 show that the pineapple industry was worth $52.4 million to the economy in 2014/15 with 67,434 tonnes produced.

Ms Mackenzie said the industry had been making a transition from being a predominantly processed commodity, with the Golden Circle cannery, to be a fresh commodity.

However, she said that had been met with it’s own challenges with issues of supply and demand.

“A pineapple is a big capital item, it's $4 rather than 50c, so we want to make sure every time they have a pineapple, it's the best pineapple they've ever had.

“An issue in the past has been with consistency and we’ve been working hard to give people the best eating experience.”

Ms Mackenzie said a number of factors had contributed to last year’s over-supply issue, which saw tonnes of the fruit rotting in the field at Rollingstone during the cannery’s planned Christmas shut-down period.

“Part of the issue with pineapple’s is that they are really hard to predict when they'll come on… so that makes managing supply a little bit challenging.

“We have to have a really frank conversation with players across the supply chain about how we can not only manage oversupply from a production end, but over supply is also a function of things not necessarily things being right at a demand end.

“It we can get enough people eating pineapples, what we want is to have the same amount of supply and all being sold at a good price. It's important to work with the supply chain and not just chuck the whole product on the market floor and expect it to just disappear.”