The Polish apple season made good progress during the autumn season, with exports for one specific exporter going up by 30 percent compared to last year. Prices seem to have stabilized, after having sky-high prices at the start of the season. Furthermore, demand from long distance markets are higher than the 2019 season as well, with only Gala varieties being shipped to these markets.
According to Emilia Lewandowska, office manager for Polish apple exporter Fruit-Group, the autumn season has been good for their export volumes: “We exported about 30 percent more apples this autumn, if we compare it to the autumn in 2019. At this moment prices are stable. We have noticed quite large interest in the month of December. Usually December in Poland is a month of mandarins and oranges, so we expected that interest for apples would go down by quite a bit, but luckily it has not. We have our hands full of work for both the local market and the export markets.”
Lewandowska states they’ve seen more demand from markets that are relatively far away from Poland. “We do 100% Gala Royal for long shipments. This season we exported quite a lot to the markets in India, Dubai and Costa Rica. All of these are quite long distance markets. However we’ve also had higher demand from the Spanish market than we did in 2019. As we noticed the most important feature for our clients were stripes. At the moment there are so many Gala-varieties available on these markets. We have to make sure we choose the right one for our specific clients.”
The start of the Polish apple season had extremely high prices, but Lewandowska claims these prices dropped down rather fast after September. “We started with very high prices in September, after which they rapidly started falling down. These high prices were mostly caused by an expensive last season. However at the moment there’s a stable situation when it comes to the Polish apple prices. Prices are only slightly going down and then up again, which is normal with the fresh apple production.”
“Demand in destinations a long distance away from us seems to be higher compared to the 2019 season. Christmas week and New Year week should be a little bit more quiet and peaceful. In January we should start again with the normal work. Right now, just before Christmas, there is big interest around long-distance shipments, which caused the transport prices to go up. Right now we are doing Christmas apples. This year they are going to Spain, Scandinavia and the Czech Republic.” Lewandowska concludes.
