The reduction of the apple stocks has been remarkable during the past storage season, as evidenced by the ‘dashboard’ for apples, which was issued by the EU in October and published by NFO. In the past five years, the season started with a limited reduction of more than 600 million kilos in both November and December. But during these months last year, more than 700 million kilos were sold. At the start of this calendar year, the reduction of the stocks was again below 700 million kilos per month. That is the lowest reduction in five years. In March, on the other hand, a record amount of nearly 800 million kilos was sold. From April until June, the reduction followed the decreasing average of the past years, but did remain higher than that. In most years, July shows a recovery of the sold amounts. The graph in this dashboard doesn’t go that far. However, because of the prospect of the small harvest of 2017, it’s plausible that the reduction of stocks from last July has been halted considerably to save the new harvest as long as possible.
Source: NFO