The new Polish apple season is underway, as Gala apples are being harvested right now. Jakub Krawczyk, export manager for Polish apple exporter Appolonia, states that they will soon start harvesting their second variety of apples of the season as well: “Right now, we are starting harvesting the apples. Gala is being picked, and soon we should start with Champion, Red Jonaprince, Golden and the rest of it. In some fields, certain varieties are possible to pick up earlier, picking is not happening simultaneously in every region. Sorting is not yet at full capacity, because many workers are still working on the fields. We receive deliveries of apples every day and are filling our chambers to prepare for the entire season.”
Although Appolonia continued to export apples until the very end of the previous season, Krawczyk explains that clients are already anticipating the arrival of the new crop. “We see big demand from our clients, some of them can’t wait for us to send the first containers. We don’t want to send apples too early, because we need to cool them down and apply some other things in order to ship them in good condition for long time storage and travel. Asian markets should be quite a good receiver these year in our opinion. There should be some space for Polish apples there. Customers from Europe have also made some programs with us, South American customers are willing to order, so we can’t complain right now in terms of demand. If we will agree on the price with everybody, it should be a busy season.”
As Greece is dealing with floods that could impact their apple production, Krawczyk states that they’re ready to help out supplying apples, as they have done in the past when Greece had issues: “If it’s true that Greek apples were affected and there will be less crop there, we should be able to export more to Greece. We’ve worked more than ten years with Greece and our customers can always count on us. I remember a year where there was less crop in Greece and I think we doubled our sales there. Right now, it’s too early to say something about how it will end up, we need to wait a bit to have a more substantial view of the situation there.”
Despite Polish apple prices increasing, Krawczyk feels these increases do not compare to the input costs. They will also look towards the Italian exporters, as Krawczyk states the Polish Gala apples are not that different from the Italian ones. “The starting price for Polish apples were higher than last year, but in our opinion these prices aren’t that high if we compare them to all the costs. Growers need to receive better money than last season for apples, because it was difficult to make a profit with all the operational costs that increased. We expect any price increase to be rather small, because we’re receiving information from our customers that our offers are quite similar to the Italian apples prices, or even exactly the same as theirs. We believe that our quality of Gala is not worse than Italian apples, so we don’t think that our apples should be cheaper. Our goal is to improve quality every year and with that improvement comes larger costs, so it’s obvious that apples will cost more than they did in the last few seasons.”
Overall Krawczyk expects to have a positive season with good demand: “Our Gala crop should be quite good, which is number one variety we export to Asian countries. The pressure of these apples is very good, the color is nice and we expect big demand for Gala this year. We receive a lot of info on the fact that Red Jonaprince and Idared could be less available this season, but we will wait with the numbers until we have these varieties in stock. Also, many growers have informed us on slightly lower volumes of Ligol, which is a variety that is very popular on the Polish supermarket shelves.”
Appolonia will be exhibiting during Fruit Attraction. You can find their stand in Hall 8, stand 8C18.
For more information:
Jakub Krawczyk
Appolonia
Tel: +48 785 342 930
Email: jakub.krawczyk@appolonia.pl
www.appolonia.pl