The French company Pomanjou markets the Honeycrunch® apple on the European market. About half of the company’s orchards have been planted with the variety. Arnaud de Puineuf of Pomanjou: “Over the last few years we've planted a lot of new trees. Despite this, due to the frost which affected Europe, the volume did not increase as initially intended. Luckily we were able to supply all our current customers with the quality and volume they are used to. For a registered variety like the Honeycrunch® this is extremely important.”
"Our orchards managers spent several nights in the orchards to protect the trees against the frost using water sprinklers mechanism and windmills, but we could not save everything. Even orchards that had not been affected by frost in 15 or 20 years were damaged. The lack of increase in volume resulted in the fact that we did not expand this year as initially intended even though we were and still are able to satisfy our current customer base."
Pomanjou is part of the Innatis Group and is based in the Val-the-Loire. The fresh apple market represents the major part of the company’s turnover. Other varieties sold by the company are Gala, Granny Smith, Braeburn and Golden Delicious, but none of them is as popular as the Honeycrunch®. Most of the products are intended for the central and northern European market, especially Germany, Scandinavia and the UK.
Arnaud: “When the French season is over, we import pears and apples from Chile and South Africa. We’ve done this for close to twenty years now.” A subsidiary called DSA (for Direct South Africa) supplies the company with new product ranges such as: oranges, pomelos and sweet potatoes.
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Pomanjou