A strong season is expected for the Polish soft fruit season, says Mateusz Pilch, co-founder of Polish berry cooperation BerryGroup: "In our case at BerryGroup, the harvest outlook for all berry categories is currently very positive. This year's winter conditions were highly favorable for our crops. Although temperatures dropped to as low as -20°C, the frost period began in December and remained stable and uninterrupted through the end of February, which benefited plant dormancy and overall crop condition."
Rather than expanding acreage, the focus is more on modernizing the current acreage in order to increase the yield, Pilch explains. "In practice, we're no longer expanding our cultivation area in terms of total hectares. Instead, we're intensively replacing older open-field plantations with modern tunnel systems, relocating production into these controlled environments. This applies to all berry crops, including blueberries. As a result, we are significantly increasing yield per hectare while also achieving substantially higher fruit quality."
© BerryGroup sp. z o.o.
Although Poland recently experienced frosts again, Pilch emphasizes that this problem has been solved for their tunnel-grown produce: "At present, for our tunnel-grown crops, winter remains the only significant weather-related risk. Other risks such as spring frosts, hailstorms, heavy rainfall, or bird damage have essentially been eliminated. As mentioned earlier, we are expecting a very strong harvest this season. We've certainly felt a significant increase in fuel and fertilizer costs. However, the Middle East is not a major sales market for us, so developments in that region are not expected to have a direct impact on our sales performance."
Europe will remain the core export market for BerryGroup this season. "We supply berries year-round, 52 weeks a year, and as expected, demand can fluctuate. Regarding fruit from our own production, we remain confident," Pilch continues. "Our volumes are effectively already committed, even though we are still at an early flowering stage. Our primary market continues to be Europe. We also benefit from the fact that berry consumption in Poland is among the highest in Europe, and domestic prices have largely aligned with export price levels. While we do export to Asia and occasionally ship small volumes to Africa, Europe remains our core market."
© BerryGroup sp. z o.o.
According to Pilch, the greatest challenge for the season has been weather volatility. "Anyone involved in fruit production understands how devastating it can be to lose the results of an entire year's work to a single night of frost or a brief hailstorm. This is why we are fully committed to protected cultivation systems. The second challenge is labor availability. Here, the growth of fruit imports into Poland has actually been beneficial. It allows many of our seasonal harvest workers to transition into roles in our packing facilities once the picking season ends. As a result, we are able to offer more stable employment and remain an attractive employer."
© BerryGroup sp. z o.o.
"We'll soon begin harvesting green asparagus, followed by raspberries at the beginning of June. In the coming weeks, we are hoping for favorable weather conditions and a brief period of rest, as once the harvest season begins, we will remain fully engaged through November," Pilch concludes.
For more information:
Mateusz Pilch
BerryGroup
Tel: +48 696 069 674
[email protected]
www.berrygroup.eu
