At first glance, the logic behind import restrictions on Ukrainian apple juice concentrate appears straightforward: limit lower-cost imports and thereby protect European apple growers and concentrate producers. But apple juice concentrate is a globally traded commodity, while Poland is not simply a producer. It is one of the world’s major centres for processing, blending and exporting apple juice concentrate. This makes the real economic effects of trade restrictions considerably more complex than they might initially appear, reports EastFruit.
Under the current trade regime, Ukraine has an annual duty-free EU quota of 30,000 tonnes of apple juice. For concentrated apple juice under CN 2009 79 19, imports above the quota are subject to a 30% tariff.
The scale of the trade is illustrated well by 2024, when access to the EU market was substantially more liberal. Ukraine exported around 108,700 tonnes of apple juice under HS 200970, worth approximately USD 218 million. The largest destinations included Poland with 25,200 tonnes, Germany with 21,200 tonnes, the United States with 15,400 tonnes and Austria with 13,300 tonnes. Total EU imports from Ukraine amounted to roughly 78,200 tonnes.
Poland is particularly revealing. In 2024, it imported more than 80,000 tonnes of apple juice, including 25,700 tonnes from Ukraine and 27,600 tonnes from Moldova. At the same time, Poland exported almost 480,000 tonnes worth USD 574 million. Its largest markets included Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France.
These figures change the nature of the discussion. The Polish industry does not merely compete with Ukrainian concentrate. It also uses imported Ukrainian material to support its own large export-oriented processing industry.
When Ukrainian concentrate can enter Poland duty-free, Polish companies can blend it with domestically produced or other imported concentrate, standardise the product for acidity, colour and other specifications, store and finance it, and supply large international customers. The associated value added — blending, trading margins, logistics, financing and customer servicing — remains largely within Poland and the wider EU economy, where it also contributes to employment and the tax base.
When Ukrainian concentrate is instead subject to a 30% tariff, those volumes do not disappear from the world market. Ukrainian processors seek alternative buyers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Asia or the Middle East. A product that might otherwise have been an input for a Polish exporter can therefore become a direct competitor to that exporter in the final market, where the most important commercial margins are earned.
This is also highly relevant when assessing the impact on Polish apple growers. Poland exports a very large share of its apple juice concentrate, meaning that selling prices are heavily influenced by international competition. If competition on world markets intensifies, Polish processors cannot simply pass higher input costs on to overseas buyers.
Instead, part of the adjustment is likely to move backwards through the supply chain. To preserve margins, processors have an incentive to limit the prices they can afford to pay for industrial apples. If Ukrainian concentrate has to be replaced with material sourced from China, Türkiye or other more distant suppliers, additional logistics, financing and inventory costs further raise the cost of the final product. In a competitive export market, this increases downward pressure on the procurement price that processors can offer Polish growers.
This creates a potential paradox: a tariff intended to protect Polish apple growers may, under certain market conditions, reduce the profitability of Polish processing and consequently weaken processors’ ability to pay higher prices for domestic industrial apples.
The potential economic scale is not insignificant. If duty-free access allowed Ukrainian supplies to the EU to increase from the current 30,000-tonne quota to around 60,000–80,000 tonnes, an additional 30,000–50,000 tonnes could enter the European market. At an indicative concentrate value of EUR 1,800–2,000 per tonne, a 30% tariff on these volumes represents roughly EUR 16–30 million in potential tariff-related costs.
At the same time, even a relatively small improvement in the competitiveness of Polish exports can be worth a similar amount. Poland exports around 480,000 tonnes annually. If access to more competitive raw materials, combined with reduced direct competition from Ukrainian product in third-country markets, improved the average realised margin by only EUR 30–50 per tonne, the effect would amount to approximately EUR 14–24 million annually. At EUR 75 per tonne, it would approach EUR 36 million.
These are scenarios rather than forecasts, but they demonstrate an important point: small changes in margins applied to a very large export flow can be comparable in value to the entire apparent benefit of tariff protection.
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There is another dimension that is often overlooked. A significant part of Ukraine’s juice-processing industry is already integrated into European corporate supply chains. Austria Juice operates production in Vinnytsia, processing Ukrainian apples into concentrate, with much of the output subsequently marketed within the group through Austria. Austria’s Pfanner operates a production site in Bar alongside its facilities in Austria, Italy and Germany. Germany’s Döhler also has several operations in Ukraine, including Döhler Dinter Ukraine Skala and Döhler Bukovina.
The tariff therefore does not simply create a barrier between “Ukrainian” and “European” businesses. In some cases, it creates a barrier inside already integrated European supply chains.
Consumers also bear part of the cost of this inefficiency. If Ukrainian concentrate is valued at around EUR 1,850 per tonne, a 30% tariff adds approximately EUR 555 per tonne. One tonne of concentrate can produce roughly 5,800–6,000 litres of 100% apple juice, implying a maximum direct tariff effect of around 9–10 euro cents per litre.
The full effect does not necessarily appear directly on supermarket shelves, because the cost is shared between processors, traders, retailers and consumers. But trade restrictions also generate indirect costs. If European processors replace nearby Ukrainian supply with more expensive or logistically less efficient sources, procurement, transport, financing and inventory costs increase.
Even if such inefficiencies raise the average cost of concentrate to the European industry by only EUR 50 per tonne, across a market of around 500,000 tonnes this would represent approximately EUR 25 million in additional annual costs. In final juice terms, this is less than one euro cent per litre — almost invisible on an individual bottle, but substantial across the entire EU market.
None of this means that full market opening would be costless. Greater imports could increase competitive pressure on some EU concentrate producers. However, the relevant strategic question is broader.
Ukraine’s 60,000–100,000 tonnes of exportable concentrate are likely to be produced regardless of the tariff regime. The real choice is whether those volumes become an input into Poland’s and the EU’s processing and export industries, allowing European companies to capture part of the value added, or whether they are redirected to world markets where they compete directly with European exporters.
Seen from this perspective, duty-free trade should not necessarily be viewed as a concession to Ukraine. It may instead be a pragmatic way to improve the competitiveness of the European juice industry, strengthen integrated EU supply chains, reduce unnecessary costs and potentially support rather than undermine the economic position of European apple growers.
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