Despite a solid Polish apple season in turns of production, the season was full of logistical challenges, says Aniruddh Ramesh, director of Polish apple exporter LVMG Grupa: "Overall, the apple season was volume centric for us. In our opinion, we had a successful export season, shipping around 10,000 metric tons of apples. However, we did face some complaints from our customers that due to the long and delayed transit time, some of the weaker fruits did not reach their destination in good condition."
Another difficulty of the season was the lack of apples that were of such quality, that they could endure the longer transit time, Ramesh explains. "The availability of quality export apples has been a major challenge. There were more fruits from new plantations of varieties like Royal Gala available, but strong ones were pretty scarce on the market. And of course, the Red Sea issue was one of the huge issues for the entire fruit and vegetable business, as the disruption has impacted the business significantly. It has just meant it is quite hard to get fruits reaching the customers in good quality, which comes with a lot of risk."
As LVMG's main market is in Asia, the Red Sea crisis was a massive disruption to the logistical side of things, Ramesh states: "Our best market is definitely the Asian market, as this market is growing for us each season. We grow consistently in this market as the quality of our apples speaks for our business. Customers of our customers can't wait to receive our products. So, we're in a very positive space in our targeted markets. Of course, the Red Sea crisis also meant that we had to look for alternate shipping routes that could be the fast. We had to plan well ahead of the production and the delivery to port, sometimes rerouting the ship from different sea ports across the EU. Our logistic partners deserve all the credit for this, as they successfully helped us adapt to this new challenge, however it was such a big challenge, that we could not adapt immediately and had to take some time."
Ramesh feels that a lack of availability of great quality apples caused for high prices by the end of the season. "The prices for apples took a big turn from December 2023 onwards and kept rising. By the month of May, we faced a crisis with finding fruit that was of good enough quality for export and as such that slowed our business down a lot, we even had to decline many orders. As prices were high and supply was low, we had to fight hard to secure quality fruit in terms of pricing and quick payments to growers. Meanwhile due to the long transit time, we ourselves had to wait for payment from our customers, so the payment cycle also was an additional problem as a result."
Looking ahead, Ramesh hopes to get a foothold in the South American market in the upcoming apple season: "The spring frost has done some damage in a few regions, but most of our regular growers have not had a huge loss. So, we are pretty optimistic for the upcoming season. We also hope to establish on the South American market additionally, as we have received many requests from that region."
For more information:
Aniruddh Ramesh
LVMG Grupa Sp.z o.o.
Email: [email protected]
http://www.lvmg.pl