The Greek peach season is about to take off. Harvesting will start in two weeks, but the season appears to be a promising one. Thanks to great winter conditions, one Greek exporter expects his trees to give a bigger yield than previously anticipated.
Greek exporting company AC Meliki has over 500 producers delivering directly to the company. Dimitris Tzounopoulos is the general manager of the Group and he sees the company growing every year: “With each year that passes we see an increase in production. We currently cultivate about 8000 tons of stone fruits and will have over 4000 tons of kiwis. About 99 per cent of the produce we cultivate is destined for export, and we offer all types of packaging.”
The peach season will start at the end of May, in about two weeks’ time. This is a little later than previous years, says Tzounopoulos: “We’ve had some cold weather in Greece the past few weeks, which has resulted in a delay for the season. I expect this delay to be between a week and ten days, meaning we should be ready to harvest near the end of this month. During the winter we’ve also had a lot of cold, which means the trees will produce more fruits. I expect to have crops until the very beginning of December.”
Dealing with 500 growers isn’t always easy, especially if you require them to be in close contact with you: “We are very careful in terms of quality. This means we have to be on top of things during the growing process. For this reason we are in very frequent contact with all of our growers, to ensure all the crops are healthy and will be of the quality we have come to expect of our growers. The quality our clients have come to expect from us. Since we have great quality peaches, we can also ask for better prices.” Tzounopoulos explains.
AC Meliki mostly exports their peaches to Eastern European countries: “We export to Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. These have been steady clients, but we’re looking to branch out. We’d love to find reliable buyers from Croatia, Slovakia, Sweden and Finland. These markets could be very interesting for us.”
The exporter from Greece will be an exhibitor during Fruit Attraction in Madrid and Fruit Logistica in Berlin. “Yes, we always attend the exhibitions in Madrid and Berlin. We also attended Freskon in Greece, which is also one of our regular stops when it comes to putting up a stand!”
For more information:
Dimitris Tzounopoulos
A.C. Meliki
Tel: +30 6975 129 004
Email: [email protected]