The national plum season is coming to an end, but...

In Poland, this year's season of domestic dessert plums is definitively coming to an end. How were the wholesale prices of these fruits behaving in October? And how do they compare to the end of the 2023 season? Last year, the end of the season for domestic plums was marked by the stabilization of their wholesale prices. There was no expected upward trend, even though the demand for plums remained at a good level.

This year, the scenario in the domestic plum market was clearly different. The upward trend in the prices of Polish dessert plums began in wholesale as early as the second decade of September, despite the significant volumes of imported plums present in our market. However, it seems that this import - substantial, but still less than what many market participants on the demand side expected.

In October of this year, prices of plum varieties such as President and Top Hit increased significantly in wholesale by almost 48 percent to a level of 5.00-8.00 PLN/kg. Hungarian plums increased by 57 percent to 4.50-6.50 PLN/kg. For comparison, a year earlier, plums in October ended with prices of 3.50-5.50 PLN/kg for President and Top Hit, and 3.50-4.50 PLN/kg for Hungarian plums.

Last year, it seems that the import was even higher than now. This was mainly due to the lower availability of late plums from Moldova. Also, more domestic plums from cold storage facilities reached the market at the end of the season than in the current season. After last year's weaker end of the season in terms of prices, there was less inclination to store these fruits for a long time.

Returning to the current situation - domestic dessert plums are definitively disappearing from the wholesale offer, but there are still a few, but still some, interested buyers for processing fruits. Here, prices remain at the level of 1.40-2.00 PLN/kg. The season is almost a month longer than last year, and prices are higher than those in October 2023 by over one-fifth.