The 2015/16 pear campaign was better than the previous one. Commercialisation is now coming to an end and the year will also be remembered for the good quality of the produce.
"Some of our partners have almost finished the stocks of Abate. Others still have a month to go. In general, quality was good for all varieties. For what concerns prices, it is still too early to talk about specific figures, but things did go better than last year," explains Alberto Garbuglia (in the photo), managing director for Origine Group.
Before talking about the single varieties, Garbuglia explains that, for the next campaign, Origine is working on a project - co-financed by the EU - to promote Emilia Romagna Pgi pears in France. "Selling is not enough, we need to make customers understand the value of what we offer. We expect to reach excellent results."
For what concerns the single varieties, the managing director explains that Abate sales were regular throughout the entire season, although the second part of the campaign was much better than the first one.
"The Kaiser variety recovered a lot over the last 6 week after a slow start. There are still 4 weeks to go and quality is excellent. The Decana season is over - it's a niche variety preferred by pear lovers. Conference pears have been affected by the closure of the Russian market, which usually absorbed volumes from the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. Destocking in March was slow and stocks are still above what we had expected."
"I believe the season went quite well. Of course one year is not enough to make pear production profitable. Last year was very difficult and we will have to see how next year will go. We must work hard to improve.
Luca Granata (in the photo), director of Opera, talked about the situation and expectations for the 2015/16 pear campaign.
"The commercialisation of the produce we collected from our partners in autumn 2015 is proceeding in line with our sales plan. We are packaging those volumes that had been destined to extended stocking and we are also managing the stocks of various varieties so as to guarantee supplies until late May-early June."
For what concerns profits, Granata states that "profits for pear producers can be defined as 'less bad' than last year. We are not satisfied though, as the average revenue per hectare continues to be below what is needed to guarantee the economic sustainability of this sector. I also believe that this year's profits were mostly due to chance rather than to real and significant structural improvements within the sector."
Opera works with 19 partners, over 1,000 pear producers and over 210 thousand tons of fruit, i.e. around 30% of the domestic pear production. It is probably the largest pear producer organisation in the world.
"We are simply not as small as the others, which is not enough to reassure me because it is not enough to obtain what we want. It is obvious how, to be able to have an effect on the market and manage to create an increased value for pears and therefore make the entire chain sustainable, we should manage to aggregate quotas above 50% of production."
"Instead, we continue to work on our own and compete against each other. Maybe some will benefit from this in the short term, but it is not a viable option in the medium term because the situation is not sustainable for long. Producers and other operators have the possibility of changing things but, instead of working together, they work against each other."
"Things are not really encouraging at the moment but, on a more positive side, I must say that Opera is doing great. Everybody is enthusiastic about it and we are quickly becoming a 'team'. We have clear ideas about what needs to be done and what we need to get it done. There is still a long way to go to reach our main objective, i.e. to gain more profits for our producers."
"I don't know if we'll manage it, but we are trying very hard. Nobody will be satisfied until we will reach this goal."
