The sales of Polish apples has been rather stable, but there was one specific variety that did exceptionally well in Western Europe, says Jakub Krawczyk, export manager for Polish apple exporter Appolonia.
“We sold similar amounts of apples as we did during other seasons and quantities that we have left in stock are also quite good. We can say the sales for our company are stable. We did sell much more of the Gala variety if you look at the percentage of sales, which our customers couldn’t buy in Western Europe, as clients informed us that the quality there wasn’t so good and volumes were smaller. So this season Gala performed pretty well. Although it is better to send Gala to Asia or South America in the beginning of the season, when the fruits have the biggest pressure and the shelf life is the longest. Soon apples from Southern Hemisphere will appear on the market, so we will have an additional competitor supplying our clients.”
For the remaining half of the season, Krawczyk has hopes for two other varieties to do well, he explains. “We would like to increase sale of Red Jonaprince and Idared varieties in the second half of the season, because there are still quite big stocks of those two available. We also observed that this year more new customers contacted with us, which is a good thing. Most of them saw our apples at destination ports and liked it, and some of them were just looking for a Polish producers and found us. I think many Polish companies started cooperations in new markets this season, so we hope these markets will develop further in the future.”
Krawczyk notes that demand for organic apples is growing, as he also gets more inquiries from their current clients about these kind of apples. However, their production of organic apples is still growing, he says: “We’ve only just started with organic apples, so it’s just a small percent of our sales compared to conventional apples, but we are hoping to develop it to a larger scale in the future. We see there is a good market for organic apples, and think this market will grow bigger and bigger every year. We want to expand on it and we think more growers will go into bio fruits. More customers are asking for organic apples and we need to keep up with that trend in order to not miss our chance in the future.”
The never growing prices of Polish apples will eventually lead to apple cultivation no longer being profitable in Poland, Krawczyk feels. “Like always, after New Year the prices for apples went up. But in general the price has been stable, there are no big jumps. The biggest issue is that the price of apples has remained on the same level for years now. So if you calculate how much production costs have increased, it’s easy to see that growers are making less money. If this trend continues for the next few years, production of apples will become unprofitable. I think this is already the case for some growers at this time, but it will become a problem on a much larger scale in the future.”
“We’re still waiting for the opening of various markets, some countries either have still their own apples in stock or have some restrictions for importing. Lots of our containers are still on the way to the customers, so we hope they will arrive with no troubles ahead. For us still it would still be best if we could start up with Egypt, they were always a good importer of Polish apples,” Krawczyk concludes.
Appolonia will exhibit during Fruit Logistica, you can find their stand at Hall 27, stand E10.
For more information:
Jakub Krawczyk
Appolonia
Tel: +48 785 342 930
Email: jakub.krawczyk@appolonia.pl
www.appolonia.pl