Apples from Serbia are replacing apples from Moldova on the Russian market

EastFruit analysts draw attention to interesting changes in the East European apple market. The cancellation of tax incentives for the supply of apples from Moldova to Russia from April 1, 2021 led to a sharp increase in the interest of Russian fruit importers in the Serbian apple. Serbian suppliers were quick to respond as stocks of apples in Serbia’s fruit storage facilities are quite high, and apple prices on the EU market have been under pressure in recent weeks.

At the same time, Serbia in the recent two seasons has been actively looking for alternatives to the Russian market when exporting fresh apples, since Serbian farmers and traders are faced with growing competition in the Russian market from locally grown fruits as well as from the apples shipped to Russia by Iran and Turkey. In addition, it turned out that for a high-quality apples that Serbia can produce and export, it is quite possible to get a higher price than in the Russian Federation in the markets of Southeast Asia, the Middle East and even the UK and some EU countries.

However, presently exports of high and medium quality apples to Russia from Serbia are very relevant, because the prices in Russian now reach 90-92 US cents per kg for such products. Perhaps, one of the reasons for the increase in the demand by Russian buyers are due to overestimation of the local apple stocks, because in January 2021, apple imports turned out to be unexpectedly low.

By the way, in January this Serbia also reduced shipments of apples to Russia by 22% compared to exports in January 2020. At the same time, Serbia doubled exports of fresh apples to the UAE, and shipped a record volume of apples to Saudi Arabia, although a year earlier it delivered only one consignment of apples to this country in January.

The increase in apple shipments from Serbia to Russia has even led to an increase in the costs of freighting vehicles in this direction.