Plum prices are going up.

The season for domestic plums is coming to an end in Poland. And it's not a slow trend. The supply of these fruits is quickly decreasing, and it seems that this year the season for Polish plums will end earlier than usual. This was not unexpected. We had an exceptionally quick start to the commercial campaign this year and its intense course, so it was foreseeable that the end would come sooner.

In Poland, relatively few harvested dessert plums are being placed in cold storage. This is due to the main problem of this segment of the domestic fresh fruit market, which is the high pressure of imports. This pressure persists throughout the season and is equally intense during the peak supply period and in the fall. Therefore, the risk that the costs incurred for cooling and storage in refrigerators will not be recovered is high for these fruits.

But in a season like the current year, when the harvest was poor, we see a clear impact of the rapid decline in supply on the prices of dessert plums. Currently, the selling prices of these fruits in larger-scale trade range from 3.00 to 5.00 PLN/kg, depending on the variety. Hungarian plums have lower prices, while the most sought-after varieties like President or Top Hit, which remain firm for a long time, are the most expensive.

In recent days, these prices have increased by 10-14 percent, depending on the variety. And depending on the variety, they are in different relation to the prices from the previous season. Hungarian plums currently have prices quite similar to those from the previous year. However, the most sought-after and expensive varieties currently have wholesale prices significantly above last year's levels (+26 percent). But this is solely due to the fact that last year the upward trend for the prices of these varieties began slightly later, after October 6. And by the end of the 2023 season, they had increased by 29 percent to a level comparable to the current one. This year, we can expect higher prices before the end of the season, as the main country currently exporting plums to the EU, Moldova, is also reporting a faster end to the season.