Thanks to the very hot summer Europe is seeing an overflow of apples. One could even say Europe is completely saturated, but there are other regions who are still interested in importing the European apples. Jan Nowakowski from Genesis Fresh believes Asia is currently the market to focus on.
Although there is no denying there is an abundance of apples on the European market, one can’t really argue about the quality of the Polish apples either. According to Jan Nowakowski, manager of Genesis Fresh, the crops are actually really good this season: “The produce we’ve harvested so far has great quality. The apples are a little bit sweeter than usual, which is a good thing considering our Asian clients prefer our smaller, sweeter apples. This is why we should probably focus our attention towards the Asian market, as Europe doesn’t require as many as before apples anyway.”
Genesis Fresh is aiming their sights on countries like India and China: “There is still a demand in these countries, but there are also opportunities in the Middle East and Egypt. We’ll have to make an effort to sell our apples in these markets, as the prices are at bottom. These regions will still pay a somewhat fair price compared to Europe, which makes a lot of sense.”
In Poland the government is trying to relieve some of the apple growers by taking 500,000 tonnes of apples away from the market for a set minimum price. This hasn’t been finalized yet, but it could prove to be very helpful in the short term. For the long term, Nowakowski is noticing a trend: “We see a lot of growers changing their production into organic. Although I do believe in the trend, you have to consider it won’t just be the price of your apples increasing. The costs of producing them will also rise, so it’s not just an easy solution for everyone. It’s great that people are looking at and discussing different options though.”
As for the company Genesis Fresh itself, it’s about time to focus on the latest variety Ida Red: “The Ida Red apple is still the most popular variety in Poland and it comes a little later than the rest. So now that most of the other varieties like Gala and Golden are already harvested, we can change our focus towards the Ida Red for the rest of the season. Then we should turn our sights towards next year, which should be better. The only reason Poland has this huge amount of apples this year, is due to the weather conditions. Next year there will probably be some losses due to storms, frost and the orchards will give us less apples, stabilizing the market. Who knows, it might turn out like two years ago where there was a great demand for Polish apples!”
