The cherry season of 2024 is already behind us.
The cherry season in Poland in 2024 has already ended, at least on a large wholesale scale. In small wholesale, there are still some last batches of these fruits available, but their supply is minimal. The prices have also increased compared to the levels at the end of July when the regular season in large wholesale finished.
How did the prices of Polish cherries in wholesale trade shape up in the 2024 season? Did the concerns of many producers expressed before the start of this year's harvest, that prices would be low, come true? This was despite the spring frosts which this year heavily hit orchards, and it was already known that there would be fewer fruits on the trees compared to good years.
source: own elaboration based on GUS data
Let's start with the harvest. In the "Preliminary estimate of major crops" published by GUS at the end of July, it was stated that the cherry harvest in 2024 was estimated at 52.1 thousand tons. This is a significant decrease year on year, by 24 percent. Therefore, the pessimistic scenarios regarding the scale of damage caused by the April and May frosts in cherry orchards were fully confirmed this year.
On the other hand, it should be noted that despite such a significant drop year on year, this year's volumes of harvested cherries were far from being at record low levels. In 2017, less than 20 thousand tons of these fruits were harvested in Poland. So, what impact did these lower, though not record-low, harvests have on cherry prices in the Polish wholesale market?
Firstly, it should be reminded that the aforementioned GUS data were available at the end of July, essentially after the regular cherry season. During its duration, there was no numerical confirmation of the opinions prevailing among orchardists. At the beginning of the marketing campaign, concerns about low prices seemed to be confirmed. This can be seen in the chart.
The start of the season was weak for one reason - due to the large import of cherries to Poland. This import posed a challenge for domestic cherries throughout the campaign and this is now a permanent phenomenon. The pressure from imported cherries (including cheap fruits from outside the EU) is always felt.
In this season, it was less effective due to such a significant drop in Polish harvests that even with imports, the overall volume of fruits available in our market was not very high. From the second week of June, this could already be seen in the prices of domestic cherries, which this year avoided the typical summer slump seen in previous years. As a result, from the beginning of July, we had record high prices for these fruits compared to the previous five years. This continued until the end of the regular season.
Large wholesale prices finished ranging from 12.00-18.00 PLN/kg, which is approximately 2.79-4.19 EUR/kg. Currently, cherry prices are higher, which is natural in conditions of disappearing supply, but they are not very high. Most often, they are between 14.00-24.00 PLN/kg (3.26-5.58 EUR/kg), although lower quality fruits are still locally available for 12.00-14.00 PLN/kg (2.79-3.26 EUR/kg).