Tasmanian avocados a smash hit

WHAT started with a conversation over a couple of beers has developed into a major new venture for well known Tasmanian vegetable company Harvest Moon. 

After six years of waiting, this week the company harvested the first of its locally grown avocados. 

The avocados are being grown at a new orchard at Forth not far from the company’s packing facility. 

After initially starting with one hectare of trees, the company now has 16ha planted. Managing director Mark Kable said the idea to branch out into avocados came after he had a conversation with a friend from Australian Produce Partners about establishing a southern-based avocado production area. 

The orchard is a joint venture with APP and Mr Kable said the aim is to supply avocados to the market during a key time when supplies from the larger production areas in mainland states are very limited. 

“What we’re essentially trying to do is fill a hole," he said. 

“Western Australia finish at Christmas, Queensland don’t start for probably another month, so there’s always been this gap when the produce has been coming from New Zealand. So that’s our window.” 

While there is a perception that avocados cannot successfully be grown in Tasmania, Mr Kable said the establishment of a productive orchard near Gawler a number of years ago had proved that was incorrect. 

“We’d seen how they were growing up there, so that gave us the confidence to know we could grow them here commercially on the north-west coast.” 

The orchards have been established on sloping paddocks that Mr Kable said had been tricky for vegetable production, but were ideal for avocados. 

As a company that specialises in vegetable production, branching out into a tree crop has been a learning curve. 

Waiting six years to harvest their first crop has been one of the challenges. 

“It’s a long time especially when you compare it to our other crops like spinach which is 30 days or even broccoli which is 70 days,” Mr Kable said. 

Because this is their first commercial harvest the company has contracted an apple packing facility at Spreyton to process the avocados once they are picked.

"They’re going to do all our contract packing this year until we work out how we want to do it in the future, then we’ll go and build a new facility next year,” Mr Kable said. 

While they appear fairly robust then when they are green and first picked, Mr Kable said careful handing of the fruit was essential throughout the process to prevent damage. 

After they have been picked the avocados will go to a ripening facility then the first locally grown fruit should appear on Tasmanian shop shelves in about a week. 

Avocados are unusual because they have two crops of fruit on the trees at once. 

The trees have this year’s larger fruit, which is now being harvested and also small avocados which were pollinated in November and will be next year’s harvestable crop. 

Mr Kable said they are aiming to get this year’s crop harvested over the next three weeks to allow the trees to put more energy into growing next year’s fruit. 

While putting in 16ha of trees is a significant investment, Mr Kable said they were confident the avocados could be grown here and there is also strong market demand. 

While most of the larger fruit will be sold on the domestic market, Mr Kable said there was strong demand for the smaller avocados overseas. 

“All the avocados will be sold in Tasmania for this year’s crop but we’re also sending some samples to export customers,” he said. 

“We’ve got a client in Malaysia who is one of the largest dealers of avocados in Malaysia so we’ve already sent samples over there and luckily they take a smaller-size fruit than Australia.” 

This season the fruit will be harvested from four to six year-old trees. Mr Kable said they were initially anticipating about 2000-3000 trays of avocados, but it now looks closer to 6000 trays. 

“They have performed really well, and it all comes down to the pollination,” he said. 

“In November 2023 we had a magnificent pollination and that’s the fruit we’re picking now. November is a pivotal month for pollination and the one last year was good too.” 

The trees will continue growing increasing in size. 

Most of the avocados are grown under the leaf canopy which prevents sun damage, but makes it difficult to see just how much fruit is there. 

Eventually, Mr Kable said they anticipate production across the orchard will reach 20 tonnes a hectare. 

One of the major advantages of avocados is they do not ripen until they are picked. With their first commercial harvest now underway, Mr Kable said there could be an opportunity to expand production. 

“There’s huge potential and we know there’s a market window there,” he said. “Now we know we can produce very good quality fruit, there’s a lot of potential to expand.” 

He said Tasmania’s cooler climate was an advantage and there were fewer pests and diseases than other production areas like Queensland. 

“I’ll admit we’re learning and we’re very green and learning day by day about nutrition and things like that,” he said. 

“Pollination is a really critical factor, and we should have been picking off these trees last year but the spring we had in 2022 was terrible.”

After waiting so long, Mr Kable said it was exciting to see their first crop now being harvested.

“Especially for a company like ours that usually grows vegetables, going into a tree crop was a big change, but we’re finally seeing the results and it’s really exciting,” he said.