There’s been an early start to the Polish blueberry season compared to last year, says Sandra Stefaniak-Syguła, co-owner of Polish berry trader Berrytrade: “For us, the Polish blueberry season started on the 24th of June, which is about two weeks earlier than the start of the 2023 season. So far, it has been a very good season for us in terms of quality; Polish blueberries of certain varieties have a lot of potential for long distance transport. We are gradually developing our sales to the Middle- and Far Eastern countries, thanks to this factor. These markets have our focus this season, as well as Germany.”
According to Stefaniak-Syguła, the blueberries were affected by the weather over the past few months, FreshPlaza informs. “The weather conditions did have an impact on the blueberries this year. Not just the spring frosts, but also the amplitudes of temperatures during the spring in general. The negative effect was a smaller calibration of the Duke variety on some plantations, a trend that can also be observed to some extent on the Liberty variety.”
Stefaniak-Syguła states that there’s strong demand for their product, putting their new investments to their max capacity: “”We have made huge investments throughout the entire last year. We moved into a modern facility with over 3000 square meters of cooling space and we purchased two modern AI-enabled Tomra Kato 260 optical sorters for blueberries, with the capacity to sort over 50 tons of blueberries a day. Currently, the demand for Polish blueberries is very good. We have more inquiries than we can manage, despite the fact that we moved to a much bigger facility and are working on machines with more packing capacity. The demand this season is good, not only from our customers from Germany or from the Middle East, but also locally.”
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It’s too early to tell how the total volumes will turn out, Stefaniak-Syguła says. “I think we will be able to know how the volumes have turned out this season in October, once the Polish blueberry season will be entirely finished. For now, some growers are counting on record-high crops this season, but on the other hand there are some growers that have to deal with 30-40% less fruit than they had last year. It’s hard to say what the final result will be at this point in time.”
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