The apples stored in Polish cold chambers might start finding their way onto the market soon, says Jakub Krawczyk, export manager for Polish apple exporter Appolonia: "Right now, more and more growers are calling with a willingness to open their cold chambers, so there could be very good volumes available in the coming days. Most of the customers are asking for Red Delicious and Golden Delicious, especially for quite large sizes, like 75mm+. The problem is that these kinds of sizes are not available in large volumes right now, so those who have apples fitting those requirements are able to sell them very fast."
© Nick Peters | FreshPlaza.com
Right now, there are a couple of varieties that are readily available. Krawczyk hopes that Asian importers will soon step in on a larger scale. "There is a good availability of Red Jonaprince, Champion, Jonagored, and the biggest stock in our Chambers is Red Jonaprince, so we can probably provide it to our customers until the end of the season. We still hope some customers in Asia will start buying Red Jonaprince on a bigger scale."
For Gala apples, the situation is different depending on which grower you ask. Krawczyk states they've stopped exporting the variety to overseas markets already: "Regarding Gala Royal, we know many growers still have this variety in their stocks, but Appolonia has stopped selling Gala to markets like Asia or South America since the start of the new year. We've sold almost all of our stock that was destined for those markets already. We now observe that customers are demanding a lower price for Gala, so it's probable that many exporters will sell it for a lower price, which means the price for growers will also drop. Unfortunately, the timing of selling that specific variety is very important. Soon, many customers will receive apples from the Southern Hemisphere, which in many places saw their export season start earlier."
© Appolonia Sp. z.o.o.
According to Krawczyk, demand from the EU is picking up, but not at the level the exporter is used to. "EU customers have started ordering more, but it's still not at a normal level of export. There are cheap apples from Western Europe available. Eastern countries either don't start yet, or the sales there are low. Latin America stopped ordering from Poland around mid-January. In India, there have been slightly lower sales volumes in January, and we are very curious how the sales will look in the February statistics."
For prices, the current trend seems to be an increase for one variety, but for others, it's still unknown, Krawczyk explains: "The price for Red Delicious is going up due to demand for it being strong. Maybe the price for Golden apples will also rise, but we'll need to see in the coming days. Now we're observing how the market will react and if the prices will stay stable or whether there'll be a drop later on. To keep the price on the same level, or even higher, we would need demand to increase further, and I think everybody is waiting until that moment. But who knows if it'll even happen?"
"This year's national Polish stand during Fruit Logistica was really something big in our opinion. Many officials visited as well, for example, the Polish Minister of Agriculture, Stefan Krajewski. There were many guests and partners from abroad, but generally, most of the companies felt that the visitor attendance was lower than last year's. We don't know if it was because of the problems at Berlin airport or for some other reason, but you could feel that it wasn't as crowded as during the last years," Krawczyk concludes.
For more information:
Jakub Krawczyk
Appolonia
Tel. +48 785 342 930
[email protected]
www.appolonia.pl
