March has been a very strong month for the Polish apples, says Jan Nowakowski, manager for Polish apple distributor, Genesis Fresh: “The sales of apples in March peaked compared to February and previous months. The beginning of the month was very good and this feeling continued for the whole period. The stock of Red Jonaprince is the biggest in Poland this year, due to lower interest in this specific variety this year. Demand of Idared is very strong and the stock is stable, but already 20% lower compared to the previous year. The third variety in terms of biggest volumes is Golden Delicious, but the demand is very high this season and its stocks are already 12% lower compared to last year.”
The prices of apples have been steadily increasing over the past weeks. Nowakoski states this is partly due to the stocks in Poland running lower as the season’s end comes near. “From April, we’ve observed a stable growth in prices. After the Easter holidays, we have another rise in the price levels. The demand for Polish apples is coming from the entire European continent, as many countries are running out of stock and need to fulfil the demand from supermarkets. It will remain like this until the end of the season and I assume we will run out of apples by the time the season comes to a close.”
There were high expectations for Red Jonaprince this year. However, the variety has not been able to meet these expectations, due to various reasons, Nowakowski explains: “Red Jonaprince has not been popular this season. We had difficult growing conditions and a late harvest. Due to that, the fruits are not doing very well for long transit time shipments. Many importers were counting to sell our Red Prince this season. We’re still able to select the good conditioned fruit and distribute it, but most of these volumes will stay on the European markets.”
Looking at next season, there could be a shortage of apples in general. “We had a mild winter without a really strong and cold period of low temperatures. Short periods of time of snow and ice has been seen this year. Global warming is happening in Europe and we don’t have strong winters anymore. We’re waiting for the weather in May, to see if we will have frost this spring. We will have a shortage of apples in general. The distributors which supply supermarkets had secured sufficient volume to fulfil the sales. We’re also keeping the stocks to minimize the possibility of running out of apples,” Nowakowski concludes.
For more information:
Jan Nowakowski
Genesis Fresh
Tel: +48223783405
Email: info@genesisfresh.com