For one Polish apple grower, their sweet cherry production has been part of the business for quite some time, Mateusz Wajnert, head of sales for Polish apple and sweet cherry trader Galster, explains: “Galster’s history with sweet cherries is quite long and dates back twenty years ago. Our serious adventure with the production of sweet cherries started almost eight years ago, when we decided to plant new, professional sweet cherry orchards in our farms. We had a plan from the beginning. Step by step and year by year we implemented these plans, such as roofs over all sweet cherries orchards, full hydration and finally buying a sorting machine last year.”
As the sweet cherry orchards are now maturing, production levels are at their peak, Wajnert says. “When looking at production levels, the increase in percentages is quite large year-on-year, as the trees were still young and growing, therefore giving us more and more fruits with every season that passed. Right now, the trees are almost at the best time of giving both good quality as well as volumes, so we expect production levels to stabilize next year. The last two years were comparable in terms of prices. You could say the prices weren't too bad, but our expectations was higher due to our nice quality and our investment in it.”
Since Galster has been working with sweet cherries for a long time now, Wajnert feels they finally have all the expertise to start exporting their product: “I feel like we've learned a lot over the years when it comes to sweet cherry cultivation. In the past, we were working mostly with Polish local markets. I’m not saying we’ll stop working with the local market, but the ambition as always been to export the sweet cherries. That’s why we’ve invested a lot of time and money in the last few years, to get the right equipment as well as the know-how about production and preparation of cherries for export. I think in the next few months, when our season will start, we’ll see that this is the first season we’re completely comfortable in terms of knowledge about the product and our ability to export.”
The emphasis will now be on improving the quality, rather than increasing volumes, Wajnert states. “Galster will focus on the care and production of our sweet cherries in order to have better and larger calibrations of cherries. We’re not planning to plant more sweet cherries orchards, but instead focus to make the current product even better than what we have right now.”
For more information:
Mateusz Wajnert
Galster Sp. z o.o.
Tel: +48 660 042 551
Email: mateusz.wajnert@galster.pl
www.galster.pl