After a good start for the Polish apple season, exports currently seem to have calmed down recently, according to Jakub Krawczyk, export manager for Polish apple exporter Appolonia: “The apple trade slowed down a bit in the last two weeks. Orders from Europe are not too big at the moment, we see that some markets are offering lower prices than ours, and so customers are choosing their apples instead. There’s still availability for local apples in many EU countries. For the most popular export varieties, like Gala Royal and Schnico Red, Golden Delicious and Red Jonaprince, availability will be stable until the end of this year, there will be no problem to get those apples. There are some problems to procure Ligol apples, a very popular variety in Poland.”
As prices for industrial apples in Poland are still at a high level, Krawczyk doesn’t expect export prices to drop anytime soon, FreshPlaza notes. “Prices are still high for customers, but okay for the growers. We needed to correct our prices for some varieties with a few cents, because apples prices have increased. As industry apples are high still, we don’t think the price will drop. In some markets, customers can’t handle the current price, so we are waiting for the right time to start exporting to them.”
India emerged as a very strong market for European apple exporters, as their local harvest was lower. Krawczyk states that the country has now imported large volumes to a point where the market is flooded: “India has loaded a lot from Poland in the first weeks of the season, but now it has slowed down. What our customers are saying, is that lot of importers from India ordered apples from many countries, like Turkey, and at the moment there are too many apples on the market. They need to sell their stocks first to make way for new apple imports. Also, the price in India dropped down because of these big imported volumes they have at the moment, so many of our customers said they need to pause like two or three weeks with orders. Logistic companies are confirming to us the same information, that it’s a little low demand on containers at the moment. We hope the situation in beginning of December will change and we can start again doing programs with containers to that region.”
The use of the site materials is free if there is a direct and open for search engines hyperlink to a specific publication of the East-Fruit.com website.
