The Polish apple season is reaching the final stretch. According to Fruit-Group office manager Emilia Lewandowska, stocks of Gala apples are depleting: “The apple season for the long distance shipments is slowly reaching its conclusion. That said, we’ll still be exporting apples to the European markets, as well as selling our produce on the Polish domestic market. Demand is stable at this moment, it’s a healthy situation as the level of the sales is suitable to the current available supply. The stock of Gala apples is just about depleting right now.”
Both apples and pears are priced at a satisfying level for the Polish apple exporter, Lewandowska explains. “At the moment the prices of apples have gone up. This has to do with the costs of storage as well as the incurred electricity costs. The demand for apples is still good at this point of the season. This season surprised looking at the pear demand. The crop wasn’t destroyed by the frost, and the production level was normal. Demand was very good, consumers need pears and this ensured that we reached a solid price level for our pears.”
Before the season started, Fruit-Group intended to ship more of their apples overseas. They’ve managed to reach their goals, says Lewandowska: “We increased the exports for long shipments in this season. This was our goal ahead of the season and we managed to achieve that goal. We started our new project brand, Veronica. The project was ready in January, so in the middle of the apple season. We did the first shipments of Veronica in January, after Fruit Logistica.”
So far, the weather has been good for the crop of next year, Lewandowska states. “We expect there’ll be a lack of frost during the flowering period and stable sales over the next few weeks. Weather conditions haven’t been severe so far. We had some weeks with low temperatures, but it has been a normal winter. The weather or colder temperatures have not caused any damages on the trees. So basically it’s looking good for next year’s harvest right now, and in the upcoming months we’ll start applying protection to the orchards and preparing our trees for the new production of the 2023/2024 season.”
