The start of 2024 has been better for a Polish apple exporter than the start of the year before, says Emilia Lewandowska, office manager for Fruit-Group: "Looking at the start of 2024, our company has managed to increase its sales for apples compared to the start of 2023. However, the same can't be said for the sales of our pears, as we've sold less of them in January and February of 2023, compared to a year earlier. This is caused by the lower harvest of pears for our company this season."
Although Polish apple prices are quite a bit higher than they were a year ago, Lewandowska states that the producers are still not making enough money to cover their costs. "The apple prices went up slightly during the first period of the year. Overall, the season has been quite stable when it comes to the prices. We had big strikes of the producers in Poland. Despite prices having increased compared to a couple of years ago, the prices are still not sufficient to cover all of the rising costs. The production of fresh produce should be profitable and encouraging, but unfortunately this currently isn't the case. At this point, we know that energy costs will increase during the second part of this year, which of course is not positive information for our industry."
At the moment, the weather in Poland is quite cold, with temperatures dipping below 0 degrees Celsius, Lewandowska explains: "Currently, we are seeing the flowering of apple trees in central-Poland, this process begun one week ago. Normally, orchards will start blooming around the beginning of May. This means that the vegetation season will be longer this year. That being said, the current week is quite a cold one. Yesterday, temperatures were between minus one and minus two degrees Celsius in our region. Today we're even seeing – 2.5 and even -4.8 in some of the regions."
Fruit-Group has stopped the transport to overseas markets and is instead focusing on a different market for the remainder of the season. "Right now, we have finished our sales for overseas markets. The long transit time and delayed shipments forced us to finish the season at this point. And so, we focus on the European and local market at this moment. Stocks are slightly lower compared to the previous season around this time. For the remainder of the season, we would like to keep our sales at a stable level, or even have it increase a bit. We are also preparing for the upcoming soft fruit season in Poland. We got information from plantations that blueberry season could start earlier in our region, compared to last year," Lewandowska concludes.
For more information:
Emilia Lewandowska
Fruit-Group SP.z.o.o.
Email: biuro@fruitgroup.pl
www.fruitgroup.pl