Industrial apple in Poland - prices are down though

2021-10-11 10:32

Industrial apple purchase prices in Poland have fallen again. The pessimistic scenario and fears of fruit growers who saw what was happening at buying stations have come true. We have written about it on fresh-market.pl - suddenly the stocks of bought-in apples started to pile up, despite the fact that, as fruit-growers claimed, the stream of raw material flowing to purchasers did not increase significantly at all. In any case not enough to jam the logistics of delivering apples to plants and their processing.

Orchard owners are convinced that the apple rush has not been deliberately caused by processing plants in order to force another price reduction. And buying prices for regular industrial apples have fallen to between 0.25 and 0.27 PLN/kg most often, although there are still buyers (also in Mazovia) who have kept the price at 0.30 PLN/kg. Rumour has it that the target this time is 0.20 PLN/kg. Dry industry and juice apples are usually priced at 0.28-0.32 PLN/kg.

What is more, there are buyers who have suspended accepting apples altogether. Others are only accepting them on a subscription basis. There are also those who take apples but say outright that they do not know at what price and this will be given later. So the fruit grower delivers blind.

Such price levels are already critically low, but processors are in this case "supported" in their pricing policy by the situation on the dessert apple market. Here, as we also wrote on fresh-market.pl, prices start at 0.40-0.50 PLN/kg for smaller apples of less popular varieties. But even varieties such as Mutsu and Jonaprince, usually with prices slightly above average, in calibre 70+ (and even 75+ or 70/90), are being bought from fruit growers at 0.80 zł/kg.

With this situation, are we facing another wave of fruit growers' protests and processing plant blockades? During the last protests, fruit growers were called on to stop selling their industry at prices below 0.40 PLN/kg. So far to no avail. But it can be assumed that the number of fruit growers abandoning industry deliveries will increase in proportion to the scale of the fall in purchase prices.

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