Plum Season

Plums are in season in Australia from November through to April, with peak supply in January and February when Victorian orchards are in full swing. They're part of the summerfruit family, tree-ripened alongside peaches, nectarines and apricots, and the fresh window closes fairly abruptly once autumn arrives. Unlike apples, plums don't store well under normal conditions, so what you see on the shelf is almost always fresh from the orchard.

Plums are primarily a summer crop in Australia, with peak supply from January to March.

Plum trees need a cold winter to break dormancy and set a good fruit load, which is why most Australian production sits in temperate southern regions. Trees take three to four years from planting to first commercial crop and reach full production by around eight to ten years. Most orchards grow Japanese-type varieties rather than European types, as Japanese plums are better adapted to Australia's milder winters and ripen earlier. Most Japanese varieties are not self-fertile, so growers plant compatible polliniser varieties at around one per eight to ten fruiting trees plus managed honeybee colonies during flowering, per AgriFutures.

Victoria dominates at 65.7% of national production in 2024/25, mostly from the Goulburn Valley and Sunraysia around Mildura and Swan Hill. Western Australia is second at 19.8%, with orchards around Donnybrook, Manjimup and the Swan Valley. South Australia (5.2%), Queensland's Granite Belt (5.1%) and New South Wales (3.9%) make up most of the remainder, per Hort Innovation. The prune industry sits separately, centred on Young and Griffith in NSW where around 70 farming families produce up to 3,000 tonnes a year from D'Agen plantings. D'Agen is the European prune plum first recorded in Australia in 1866, with commercial orchards laid down by returned World War One soldiers in the 1920s, per AusPrunes.

Hort Innovation records the Australian plum industry at 27,869 tonnes worth $76 million in 2024/25, a relatively stable figure that has hovered between 24,000 and 33,000 tonnes a year for the past decade. Exports reached 6,666 tonnes ($28.8 million) in 2024/25, roughly 24% of production, with Asian markets the main destination. Fresh imports are typically under 100 tonnes a year, so the plums on your shelf are overwhelmingly Australian-grown. Australia ranked 42nd globally for plum production in 2022 at around 18,000–18,700 tonnes (0.15% of world output), per FAOSTAT data.