Despite lower apple volumes being harvested in Europe, at the moment there doesn’t seem much more room for Polish apple exports on the European market, says Adam Malengiewicz, sales manager for Polish apple exporter Ewa-Bis: “So far, our apple season is going quite well. The fact is that apple sales have slowed down a bit, although we did start exporting apples quite early in the season, mainly to our customers from India. In Europe, fruit growers says that there is less fruit available, but at the moment we haven’t seen a noticeable gap in the market, which makes it difficult to trade our apples on the European market at this time. However, this will hopefully change by the time it’s February and stocks start to deplete. I can say that so far, our main markets are the Middle East and Europe. It's hard to pinpoint one of our main markets, because it's variable and can change on a weekly basis.”
Polish apple exporters have seen various opportunities in new markets. Malengiewicz does wonder if these new markets will look for Polish apples next year. “We believe that countries in Latin America and Indonesia have opened up because their regular suppliers had smaller harvests compared to their previous year. And as a result, it allowed us to gain a new market to export our fruit to for the current season, but nobody knows what the situation will be next season. They could easily go back to their previous suppliers, but hopefully some will stick around for Polish apples.”
As the apples had poor color before the harvest, some were picked later to compensate for that, which could mean more effort later in the season: “Currently, we observe stable demand for apples, mainly from our regular partners with whom we have been cooperating for years. I believe that the exact volume of apples stored in cold stores is a big question. It should be considered that this year the apples had poor colour, which resulted in fruit growers waiting for a better colour of the apples, and harvest them later. However, I believe that later in the season a lot of effort will have to be spent on fruit selection,” Malengiewicz concludes.
For more information:
Adam Malengiewicz
Ewa-Bis Sp. z o.o.
Email: [email protected]
www.ewabis.com.pl