Panoramic Fruit Company
Current Availability for the Panoramic Fruit Company
This page serves to keep the visitor to the site updated on what is for sale at any given moment. The bulk of the fruit that we produce is only available in quantity from the end of June to the end of September. The precise timing varies every year and I will do my best to post the start of each crop. This is not an exact science!
Each year, there may be new fruits coming into production that I will be selling wholesale to qualified buyers. I have put together a page devoted to identifying fruit coming in the years ahead. Take a look at what is Coming in 2010 while you are here visiting this web site.
I am not open to the public and do not offer tours. This is a working commercial farm with few good roads and is just not safe for tour groups.
Availability for 2010
Timing each year starts with the arrival of flowers. This usually starts sometime in March or April and then dates of harvest can be projected. I will post this information as soon as it is available to give my customers time to plan their marketing and advertising.
Please check out the Coming in 2010 page as the year progresses.
Past years posts- see below
Availability for 2009
Update for December 15, 2009- first time ever for late season rambutan!
There is a small but steady production of rambutan being picked and shipped right now, later in the year than ever before. In past years, there were a few fruits hanging on the trees but they were low in quality and low in quantity. There might be fruit for a few more weeks and I am sold out. Look for them in supermarkets but do not expect large amounts to be available. And it is impossible to guess when this will end but probably, sometime in January, 2010.
Will this happen next year? No idea. Certainly, the weather has been a bit different and many fruit trees were affected by the amount and duration of rainfall. Maybe by the high temperatures, too.
Happy Holidays to all.
Update for July 16, 2009
It starts now with the very first shipments going out to the supermarkets July 17, 2009. The first two or three weeks, the supply will build up slowly but by August, there will be enough for all of Puerto Rico. These are very tough times for many and I hope the return of this delicious and nutritious fruit will help to put some color on the table. I did not raise my price this year one cent.
Updated April 1, 2009
No better time that April Fool's Day to try and predict when fruit will be available!
The rambutan harvest will hopefully begin sometime in July and build up rapidly in August. There will be tons of fruit available every week in the month of August and there should be a few good weeks of rambutan into September, too. Contact your brokers about receiving your first shipments in July.
Several supermarket chains did a great job with the rambutan in 2008 and will benefit in 2009 from much greater acceptance of this excellent fruit. Based on email and phone calls, people are already waiting for the season to start. And everyone will see increased interest for the coming year due to some additional factors affecting all of us; inflation in food prices and services. I can say that at the wholesale level, I will try to keep prices steady in this difficult coming year.
Some of the supermarkets in Puerto Rico have yet to carry the rambutan. Please contact Robert Luciano in Mayaguez, PR at (787) 672-2134 and if you want to speak to me, Robert can give you my contact information. We are working with brokers in San Juan who have done an excellent job introducing this new fruit to Puerto Ricans. I give them credit for being so forward-looking and willing to experiment.
It is a risky business to try and bring new fruits into the aisles of supermarkets; every square foot has to produce a profit. So I thank those of you willing to join me on this journey. I can say that there are even more fruits coming in the years ahead that most people have never heard of. In all sizes, shapes, colors, flavors...
The strained economy has highlighted the need for more "homegrown" produce. Locally grown fruits and vegetables can sometimes offer many advantages over produce flown in or brought in on ships besides just the price. Homegrown also means fresher and better tasting because of that. And nutrient content is the highest if there is less time between picking and getting the fruit into the stores. This has caused a renewed interest in 'growing your own.'
The island of Puerto Rico has allowed a trend away from self-subsistence (true in many areas outside of Puerto Rico, too) and high prices have caused many people to reconsider this, to seek out alternatives. On an island where tropical conditions prevail, so much more could be done to bring some of the food production back to this fertile gem in the Caribbean. There is a wide range of soils, rainfall amounts and temperatures as you move around this isle and go up into the mountains and significant impact on jobs available could also result from an expansion in growing locally. This goes way beyond coffee and citrus and plantains.
I try to sell as much of what I produce locally in Puerto Rico as I can but it is not always possible to sell everything in time when you have a perishable product. This is in part because my production continues upwards each year as the trees mature and I am very reluctant to waste fruit. Ever. Losses in the tons led me to look for overseas markets for the rambutan in 2008 and I obtained a permit that enables me to ship rambutan all over the world through JFK or Newark or just about any US airport that is not in a citrus-producing state. So it is possible that Puerto Rican rambutan could find homes in countries as far away as Britain, the Bahamas, St. Maarten, Canada or Japan, just not in the lower 48. I must emphasize that at this time, I am still not able to sell fresh rambutan in the States. I have been told that I will not be able to do this until 2010 or even later. To date, this process of analyzing data for my rambutan application has taken about 7 years, and counting.
There will be limited quantities of longan, abiu and durian in 2009. See Coming in 2009 for more information.
Supplemental Note
I would also like to open up the rambutan distribution to other wholesale customers in the Caribbean. Logistics would be the biggest issue to overcome; the more the importer could do to facilitate the movement of rambutan fruit from the farm gate to their door, the more easily I would be able to supply them. The fruit would come off the trees and be in your hands within 48 hours or less. I would do my best to expedite the movement from Puerto Rico with USDA inspections and attached phytosanitary certificates. Brokers who are currently bringing produce from Puerto Rico to their respective islands would be able to try this fruit possibly for the first time. Each country's agriculture department would need to be consulted to be make sure that the importation of rambutan is legal.
The airports we are closest to are in Mayaguez (MAZ) and Aguadilla (BQN). Some customers may be able to obtain fruit by sea. Cruise ships are also welcome to contact me and their brokers could coordinate the deliveries with their sailing schedules in July and August.
Seasonal versus non-seasonal fruit pricing
In general, fruit that is available year round is priced competitively because every major store has them, needs to sell them quickly as they are perishable and must compete with all of the other vendors. Seasonal fruit is in a different category. Stores try to prevent losses by marking it up higher in case they can not sell it quickly enough to beat spoilage. An example of this would be strawberries although increasingly, they are available every month. They are also quite perishable.
Rambutan is in a special category for Puerto Rico between high priced seasonal fruit and lower priced non-seasonal fruit because it will be seasonal, appearing during the summer but available in large enough quantities that the price should come down. Look for this in the years to come. It is also not as perishable as many other fruits.
Minimum quantities, terms and other details to be worked out by email at wholesale@panoramicfruit.com
Mangosteen, Longan and Durian
The mangosteen are sold out indefinitely. I continue to receive emails about the supply and would ask everyone reading this to know that no one is sorrier than I am that there is no extra fruit beyond my current commitments. None. I have no mangosteen available for sale this coming season or for the next few years.
Very young developing mangosteen
The market has changed substantially since 2008 and 2009 was a very difficult year for sales of rare gourmet fruit. Changes in the year 2010 may involve new ways to market the mangosteen that help to keep the retail price down as much as possible. I view this as a work in progress. Current customers will be contacted to keep them current.
Longan in 2010
Notes from January, 2010
The longan crop during September and October in 2009* was a disaster. It appeared that the weather or some as yet unidentified factor led to many different unrelated species of fruit turning brown and destroying the appearance and flavor of the fruit. It also affected the rambutan crop towards the end of the harvest season and tons of fruit were damaged and useless within a few weeks. The trees themselves were unaffected and further proof of this was when many rambutan produced a delicious and healthy crop in the same fields a few months later. I can only hope that whatever caused this widespread damage to the tree fruit crops will be minimized in 2010.
Notes from 2009*
It is shaping up to be a better year for the longan from the Panoramic Fruit Company but also a very late harvest. This is a challenging tree to grow because the flowering is irregular, the wood is soft and the bats, birds and bugs all love them. That said, the variety Diamond River is still not in flower and this means fruit might not be around until August or September. However, even a mild hurricane can undo this paragraph completely. I will update this when the crop has progressed further. The trees are wildly healthy. The rest is luck.
Durian- 2010
The hope is that in 2010 we will be looking at a good increase over last year's crop and this will be of interest to those who have found the charms of this fruit irresistible.
Branches loaded with durian flower buds as yet unopened
Durian fruit tends to be available sometime in August and into September every year. What this pictures shows comprises hundreds of flowers about to open. After fertilization, this section of the branch may only have 2 to 5 fruits still developing!
Wholesale inquiries are welcome at wholesale@panoramicfruit.com for the longan and durian but as I indicated above, the mangosteen is sold out for many years to come.
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A close-up of the Malabar Chestnut, Pachira aquatica.
The flower is followed by a pod containing about 2 dozen
delicious nuts a bit smaller than a hazelnut.
We grow them for erosion control. And snacks.
Rambutan in 2010
The rambutan crop this year will be our largest ever. Again. The first pick should be in July and the amounts will build every week until the peak sometime in August. Too early to say if there will still be fruit in September.
Mangosteen and Longan in 2010
No mangosteen fruit will be available as we are now sold out of mangosteen indefinitely. Longan availability will be posted in a few months after the trees flower. The typical harvest time is September but we are trying to change this so that the harvest comes in sooner. I will not know if this can be done until March or April.
Contact R. Luciano at (787) 672-2134 for more information.
Contact us at wholesale@panoramicfruit.com or call R. Luciano at(787) 672-2134