Fledgling Australian date industry looks for growers to capture huge export potential
The fruit has been a staple for millennia but now Australian growers are turning their attention to the date palm and its strong connection to the Middle East.
The Australian Date Grower Association (ADGA) is now looking to position the crop as a strong alternative for grape growers — particularly in the Riverland and Sunraysia regions where the climate for the date palm is ideal.
The ADGA said the appeal of the crop came from its potential export market, as Australia was producing the fruit in the off-season of the Northern Hemisphere.
The Australian date industry is currently comprised of 50 commercial farms over a total area of about 100 hectares, with local farms predominantly growing and exporting the barhi variety.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global date market is currently valued at about $US30 billion and is expected to climb, making it potentially lucrative for local exporters.
ADGA chair and Riverland Date Garden owner Steve Brauer has grown dates on his Gurra Gurra farm since 2004.
He said there was a lot of demand.
"I market my medjools in the soft, moist stage and it's a completely different product [compared to] an American medjool," Mr Brauer said.
"Then you've got the barhi. They're sweet and there's a huge demand for them with the Middle Eastern population, Indonesians, Indians — they recognise that crop.
"With the population of those cultures in Australia, we've got a huge demand."
Freshmax Australia sales and marketing general manager Michael Tyler said he was in the process of creating a financial guide for the ADGA to help growers from other industries make educated decisions about a potential transition.
"In the horticultural sector, I believe there's little that compares to dates when it comes to the level of significance in the Muslim community with the breaking of the Ramadan fast," he said.
Mr Tyler said his research indicated the Northern Hemisphere would run out of storage space for dates in five years.
"This represents a major opportunity for Southern Hemisphere date production … to reduce the reliance on northern plantations," he said.
"The Australian market is immature, but we're heading to a mature market at a really compelling rate [due to the] significant growth occurring [in the industry]."
While export opportunities grab most of the attention, Mr Brauer said local growers still had not "tapped into the Australian market" to its full potential.
"It's not a quick-growing crop and you've got to be in there for the long haul — 10 years before you get full production," he said.
"But I think it's an ideal crop … it's one of those you don't have to be on the ball every day, it's forgiving."
North-west Victorian grower Peter Middleton said dates had been a welcome change from growing grapes.
"It is a great change from grapes where it felt like you weren't getting good value for your fruit, but with dates we're regularly getting between $20-30 a kilogram for good quality fruit," he said.
"I like growing dates because it is a seller's market. With grapes it was very much a buyer's market.
"I have people knocking on the door all the time, and I can't supply all of them."
Mr Middleton said Australia was in a prime position to export directly to one of the world's biggest date markets.
"Dates are very important to the Islamic community and we've got Indonesia, with the world's biggest Islamic population, right on our doorstep," he said.
"There are tremendous opportunities to export dates there and to the Middle East as well.
"The domestic market is grossly undersupplied — it is a new industry and it is quite exciting."
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