Western Australia's 'spud king' Tony Galati could soon take on a new title — the king of figs.
The large scale potato grower, who also owns the independent retail store chain Spudshed, will pick his first crop of the fruit this year adding to his already extensive range of products which includes mangoes, carrots and onions.
It is just a trial crop of one hectare at this stage, but Mr Galati believes the demand is strong enough to support future growth.
"It's a product that we can see is going to become popular, lots of Australians are starting to realise how good figs are, and the demand is increasing," he said.
"In our Spudsheds, I can never buy enough figs for our stores.
"As soon as figs come on the market there's a big race and if you don't pay top money for them you don't get them."
Mr Galati said depending on labour costs and yields, they were looking to expand significantly.
"If it goes well, we're looking at planting 40 to 50 hectares down the track," he said.
Mr Galati is not the only one who believes there is strong potential for figs in the market place.
Kay and Phil Gravett, the owners of Western Australia's largest fig orchard which is currently just 5 hectares, said they too were expanding their orchard but on a much more modest scale.
"We've planted an extra 800 trees," Kay Gravett said.
"People are always saying they can never buy figs in the shops and they never see them, so it's something really nice to grow," he said.
The Gravetts grow a later season variety of fig.
Export opportunity
Mr Galati said he also believed there was a good opportunity to export fruit grown outside of the traditional season.
This has been seconded by fruit marketer Rohan Bicknell from Produce Art.
"It makes total sense," Mr Bicknell said.
"There is a lot of competition from overseas and the main producer in the world is Turkey, so we do have our work cut out for us, I guess.
"But there are many countries out there looking for Australian product and that works in their favour."
Mr Bicknell said while Western Australia might be different, he believed that on a national scale fig demand was not quite as strong as other products.
"I know there's really good money in figs when you can produce them out of season," he said.
"But then you also have that time of the year, which is now, when there's nearly too many figs for the market to handle."
