Peter van Arkel of Fruitadvies Zuid-Limburg visits Poland multiple times per year and he has been working in Poland for 10 years. he says that the situation in Poland is difficult and that there are still around 900,000 tonnes of apples in storage at the moment. Polish growers were able to sign up to take up to 150,000 tonnes of apples out of the market against a compensation of 15 Euro cent per kilo. (This is a standard EU compensation.) According to Peter the Red Delicious and Gala are the most expensive varieties at the moment, followed by RJ Prince and Golden. The prices for Idared have also risen to around 17-18 cents. The prices for the variety Szampion remain the same, around 13 to 15 Euro cent.
Co-operation collaboration
Peter: "Important news from Poland is that 25 of the largest Polish fruit co-operations have started working together. Like they do in Süd-Tirol. They have developed a brand for this, the trade mark Appolonia. At the moment there are around 75 larger fruit co-operations in Poland that only trade fruit. Now a third of those co-operations have decided to work together in a new way. In the area of fruit there are two large fairs in Poland annually. In January the MTAS took place in Warsaw and last week the TSW fair took place, where the new Polish trade mark Appolonia was presented."
He indicates that the Polish top fruit growers have had five good years. "So most companies have some reserves. But at the moment it is becoming increasingly difficult, especially due to the Russian boycott. The good thing is that they still want to collaborate there. It's still in its starting phase, but there is a lot of enthusiasm. They set up a fully accredited laboratory for determining residues and MRLs together."
For more information: pvanarkel@ziggo.nl