According to EastFruit analysts, wholesale prices for apples in Ukraine are currently more than twice as high as at the same of 2022. Ukraine’s apple harvest in 2022 was good and many wonder why did prices increase so much? Also, are there good opportunities for apple exporters from Poland and other countries at the Ukrainian apple market now?
First of all, despite a good apple harvest in 2022, Ukrainian market is experiencing an increase in apple imports, especially in the segment of medium and high-quality produce. Wholesale apple prices in Ukraine are presently 149% higher than at the same time of 2022.
Prices for which apple varieties are the highest and what was the price change on a year? See the following chart for the analyses of top 7 apple varieties in Ukraine. While on the market you could still find around 20 varieties of apples, most of the leading supermarket chains as well as growers presently have two varieties for sure: Gala and Golden Delicious.
Granny Smith in Ukraine competes with local variety Renet Simirenko, which is much tastier but does not look as good as Granny and has many other issues from the production and logistics point of view.
In terms of wholesale prices, Golden Delicious and Fuji stand out among the popular varieties – they are sold at an average of 20 UAH/kg wholesale, which is around US $0.54-0.55 per kg. Jonagold and Renet Simirenko are the cheapest apples among the top 7 varieties and are sold at US $0.43 per kg on average.
The prices for the Golden Delicious apple rose the most sharply – almost three times compared to last year. Also, Gala and Granny Smith went up in price by more than 2.5 times. But Idared grew in price the least – 2.1 times. This indicates consumer preferences for different varieties and is also associated with the peculiarities of storing different varieties of apples.
In particular, the Golden variety is very sensitive to even slight fluctuations in air temperature in the fruit storage, while Idared reacts much less to these “shakes”. Since from fall to spring Ukraine lived in the conditions of constant Russian terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure, namely on the country’s energy supply system, it was quite difficult to store all apples, and some varieties in particular.
In the 2022/23 season, Ukrainian producers were forced to rush to sell apples from storage because they were not sure of the possibility of maintaining their quality, given the “heroic” battle of the Russian army with Ukrainian energy system. Since the Ukrainian energy system won this war, those farmers who decided to keep the apples until May were able to make good money.
For more information: east-fruit.com