When Freshplaza contacted several other Polish apple exporters, everyone we contacted was surprised about this news and unsure of the validity of the claim. Marek Marzec from Ewa-bis, who also exports apples to China from Poland said, that as of the afternoon of 20 March, there was no official statement about the issue from either Polish or Chinese Authorities, making it difficult to speculate on the exact situation.
"I don't know why our company, Appolonia was mentioned in this article. We have nothing to do with the case and furthermore, we don't even ship to Panyu, the destination mentioned in the article. It is true that we carried out our first shipments to China a month ago, and had set a goal of 200 containers for the season, but adding us to this article seems to connect our name to the issue even though we are not connected. We send around 60% of the Polish apples going to China and we have not had any problems or situations." said Michal.
Michal explained that the disease mentioned has nothing to do with food safety, it is more of a health issue for the apple trees.
"Although I don't believe that this problem will have any impact on Chinese growers, I do think that it could cause protocol issues between China and Poland. China is still a new market, so there are still a limited amounts of Polish apples available and these can only be found in the big cities, nowhere near Chinese apple growers," continued Michal.
"I only heard about the reports on the Polish media a few hours ago. I am sure that this has nothing to do with Appolonia, and I even wonder if it's not, as Trump says, 'fake news'. Polish apples have been very well received on the Chinese market and I think that it could be possible that someone is trying to create bad PR for Polish apples. That is the power of the internet, anything can be spread across the world within a short period of time."
"There have been a lot of powerful changes in the Polish market recently which can make us vulnerable to these kinds of reports. We have started exporting to India, China and Vietnam, along with producing a patented energy drink made from our apples. I think that the Russian embargo has actually been a great catalyst for development of our sector, so I think that these types of situations with the media are side effects of our success."
For more information:
Michał Lachowicz
Appolonia
Tel: +48 48 332 95 69
Email: michal.lachowicz@appolonia.pl
www.appolonia.pl