“The lack of summer varieties caused all apple prices in Poland to shoot up”

The prices of industrial apples in Poland has risen significantly over the past weeks. This is true for other apples as well, as one Polish exporter explains. The reason lies within the lack of summer varieties, leaving a gap in availability for a couple of weeks.

Emilia Lewandowska is the export manager for Polish apple exporter Fruit-Group. She acknowledges the increase in prices of industrial apples in Poland. “It’s not just the industrial apples that had their prices increased, it goes for all kinds of apples destined for export as well. There’s been a gap in availability since the 20th of August until right now. Normally this would be the period where we sell summer varieties. But this season there was simply too small of an amount to meet the demand. The frost earlier in the year played a big part in this, but it’s still super rare. My father, the owner of Fruit-Group, has been exporting apples since 1996 and he’s never seen a gap like this. We’ve been selling old varieties for a long time, when we’d normally have switched to summer varieties weeks ago.”

The new harvest is about to start though, but volumes for the new season are obviously down compared to last year. “The harvesting of the Gala-varieties is about to start, this is a completely new situation for us, one grower from our cooperative harvested 120 bins of apples last year and will only have 20 bins available this year, to give you an idea of the drastic change in volumes this year.” Lewandowska says.

Despite the disappointing volumes of the harvest this year, Fruit-Group will still attend multiple exhibitions this year. “Yes, we plan on exhibiting on both Fruit Attraction in Madrid and Fruit Logistica in Berlin. Even though volumes are down, we still have quality produce available. Prices will be higher this season though, which is a good thing for the growers. Since the beginning of September prices have actually doubled. They were so low last year, that this is a more healthy and stable price for the apples,” Lewandowska concludes.

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