Almond farmer and processor Select Harvests is set to close its value added processing site in Melbourne's Thomastown later this month and exit the address in June.
Select owned the snack and cereal product names Lucky, Sunsol and NuVitality until last year's sale of its consumer brands business to New Zealand's Prolife Foods for $1.5 million.
Prolife Foods sells similar products in 20 countries, including Australia where it already has a manufacturing base in Melbourne.
It markets the Mother Earth and Scoop and Weigh portfolio of nuts and other healthy snack products.
Select Harvests is moving its industrial-scale almond packing activities, including its Renshaw and Allinga Farms brands, from the Melbourne site to its big Carina West drying, hulling and shelling plant near Mildura in northern Victoria.
Its head office team moved from Thomastown to Richmond at the end of last year.
Weather delays
Back on the farm, Select has confirmed inclement weather in its orchards in Victoria's Sunraysia, southern NSW and South Australia's Riverland has delayed the 2022 harvest, now due to wind up by mid June.
Total nut in shell volumes were likely to shrink almost a third compared with 2021.
Unless conditions deteriorate further, the company is planning for a 30,000 tonne harvest, with quality generally similar to last season.
Although that slide in volume is significant, just four years ago Select's annual harvest figures were below 15,000t.
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Managing director, Paul Thompson, said growing costs had been lower for the past year, but the difficult harvest weather would add to drying and processing expenses.
About 85 per cent of harvest had been completed by early May.
Global market pressures, particularly freight costs, were constraining this season's values, which would likely see the crop fetch an average price between $6.50 and $6.80 a kilogram.
That compares with Select's average last financial year of $6.80/kg - down from $7.50/kg in 2019-20 and $8.60 for the 2019 crop.
Solid orders
Fortunately, the company had orders for about 40pc of its current harvest at above average price levels and had already shipped product to India and China.
Mr Thompson said domestic sales remained "strong".
Overseas, larger nuts and in-shell product were in strong demand, too, but lower grade material had hit record low prices, with lengthy shipping delays and container shortages adding drag to market values.
However, as stockpiles of lower grade almonds build in the US, extremely dry conditions and frost during the Californian pollination season could impact total US production this year.
Shipments from the US, which grows most of the world's almonds, were currently down 15pc on the same time last year.
Mr Thompson said although moving product from Australian ports was subject to delays, freight disruption for our exports had been less problematic than in the US, even though costs continued to be significantly higher than historic rates.
"Almond pricing is expected to improve once these freight and logistics issues are resolved," he said.
The Almond Board of Australia reported national exports up 13pc for the year to March, with South East Asia and Central Asia, including India up 30pc.
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
