English apple season looking rosy

The English apple season is, as expected, looking very rosy. The warm spring months gave the trees a great blossom, there were good proportions of warmth and rain which has provided good sizes and the cooler weather of the last couple of weeks has given the fruit great skin colour.

Adrian Barlow from English Apples and Pears, said the first Discovery apples were picked at the end of July, with the first volumes going to the retailers at the beginning of August.

"All Discovery and Galmac have now been picked and Delbarestivale, a relatively modern variety, and early Winsor, a Cox like apple which is three weeks earlier than Cox are being harvested at the moment, Bramley is also well under way'" explains Barlow.

The season is running 3-4 weeks ahead of last year, not quite as early as 2011, but much earlier than the last two years, this due to favourable weather conditions. Pre-season estimates should be reached and more than likely exceeded.

The early season is great news for the English apple sector, which suffered in the last couple of years with late harvests, this lead to shelf space being lost to stone and soft fruit. According to Barlow the sales never really recovered last year. Although sales did increase in December and January.

He expects demand to really pick up in September when the all the kids are back at school.

Pears are not quite so promising, "The crop is slightly disappointing, similar to last year. I am disappointed that there have been no additional orchards planted, growers not convinced that the huge investment will be justified but future returns," says Barlow.

He doesn't think the Russian ban will affect the British market too badly, "The UK market is unusual in that it likes a smaller apple than its continental counterparts. In general, size across Europe is large this year, we have bigger apples than normal here this season but not as big as Europe."

Also there are opportunities outside the EU for apple export, Turkey is down by 650,000 tonnes due to bad weather conditions last winter, this is 2/3 of what Poland would normally export to Russia, if Poland can export there it will help. The Balken countries are also short by 200,000 tonnes, "This is not far off the total amount which went to Russia, of course one has to consider the demand for different varieties etc. which will have an influence on the opportunities available. The Chinese crop is also down by about 5% -1.5 million tonnes and someone will have to supply Russia which will create space in other markets, explains Barlow"

"As long as people look at the situation carefully and are determined to develop new markets and don't try to sell the volumes which would have gone to Russia within Europe, things should not get too bad," he continues. "The scheme from the EU for market withdrawals will also help, provided that it is accepted that we can't supply free of charge to sectors of the market such as charities, schools and old people's homes that would normally be supplied with product which is paid for, if we start supplying free of charge it won't have any affect on the supply of apples. If people are sensible we should be able to overcome this situation."

The situation for pears is much more problematic according to Barlow, "There is a huge supply of pears from Belgium and to a lesser extent from The Netherlands into Russia, that is the area where the greatest work needs to be undertaken, one heartening thing is the way the industry collectively in Europe has recognised that unless there is orderly marketing and great care is taken in the way in which we approach this situation there will be problems and I think everyone is unified in wanting to overcome these difficulties."