Ann: Harvest Update and Revised Earnings Guidance, page-86

As an independent dried fruit grower I have been following MRO's progress. I'd like to make a few comments on this years harvest.

It has been a very low yielding year for sultanas, a lot lower than most of us expected. Talk around the industry suggests yields are down at least 25% on last year. Many growers won't even deliver half of what they estimated, including some other big players with state of the art sultana production systems. Sultanas yields are notoriously fickle. It is also true that the crop was slow to mature this year, by at least 2 weeks, making drying and harvesting more challenging as the days get shorter and cooler in late summer/autumn. But, sultanas tend to bounce back after low yield years and next year will hopefully be a better story for us. Newer "sultana type" varieties such as sunmuscat and sunglo are proving to be more reliable, durable and higher yielding than the traditional sultana and many growers are changing over, including, I believe, MRO. Unfortunately there are some well established sectors of the industry who do not want MRO to succeed but they have introduced an extra level of competition to the industry which has been badly needed so I really hope they are here for a long time yet.