Vanguard International is pleased to provide an update on Chile’s current table grape crop. Regions can be found on the map shown (see inset).

Harvest

Chilean grapes are in week six of harvest. Region III is almost done harvesting all seedless varieties. Unfortunately, due to excessive rain, 100k fewer boxes of seedless grapes have been reportedly harvested from III Region. The Copiapo valley is wrapping up on Allison and Adora varieties that are expected to be harvested next week, and then should finish up completely. We will only have El Huasco Valley harvesting Red Globes until the end of February in III Region.

In Region IV, all Green seedless are completely harvested. In this region, suppliers from Ovalle and Vicuna are starting to harvest Red Seedless, comprised mostly of Crimson, Timco, and Allison varieties. This region is also starting with a limited number of Red Globe variety.

In VI Region, all early varieties have started harvest, including Sugraone and Flame Seedless varieties. Limited volumes are available due to the replanting of vineyards in Chile. As well, these particular varieties are starting to disappear in Chile.

Green Seedless Shortage

During the next two weeks of shipments, a shortage of green seedless varieties will be experienced. As reported above, Region III experienced a shortage and Region V is also reported to have a 30% shortage on green seedless. We will need to wait for Region VI and the Metropolitan Region’s harvest to begin to get more volumes of Green Seedless varieties.

Overall Volume

This year, Chile is expecting to harvest 70 million boxes of table grapes. Unfortunately, this proves to be a shortage of around 12 million boxes compared to last season. This shortage is due in part to the drought Chile has been experiencing this year, and in part to the replanting of many orchards.

Although Chile has exported 11.8 million boxes of table grapes thus far this season, which is on par with last year’s 11.7 million up to week six, this will not last for long. The regions we’ve received table grapes from so far (Region V and Region VI), have not shown significant impacts from replanting or the drought. We should see the effects of these implications on the later varieties. Therefore, we will probably have consistent and similar volumes until late February and see supplies taper off dramatically in March.