The harvest of a company’s apple season is now completely over. However, the busy period is coming, because exporters intend to ship as much as possible before Christmas, which will increase logistics prices. The political issue between Poland and Belarus affects businesses on both sides of the border, so exporters hope that this situation can be resolved as soon as possible.
Appolonia’s export manager Jakub Krawczyk said that thanks to the new investment in sorting and packaging machines, the Polish apple exporter will be able to process apples faster this season: “Now, the harvest is complete, and we have closed all ULO room, so we are full of apples. Fortunately, most of our growers pick apples on time, and we don’t expect any quality issues. Now all our machines are in top condition, we think the whole the season may go all out. We hope to open a new packaging plant production line in a few weeks, and we have just completed the construction.
Two new sorting and packaging machines can handle an additional 20,000 tons per year, so we are expanding our production capacity. These will help us process orders faster and perform pre-sorting. Orders like bushels will be easier and faster to prepare. We see that the demand for this type of packaging is increasing every year. ”
According to Krawczyk, Egypt is becoming a more important market for Polish companies. “The demand for Apple is greater than we expected, and we are of course very happy about it. In some regions, we have begun to deliver in large quantities, such as Egypt. We see that most companies in Poland are selling products to the North African market, and we hope the new sales platform CargoX will help sellers and receivers continue to conduct fair and productive business. In one packaging plant alone, we sorted more than 2,000 boxes of Gala Royal, which is quite a big deal considering that this season has just begun.
“October was a very good month overall.”
“Golden Delicious are popular as ever, not only in Europe but also in Egypt and in the Middle East. Although the quantities we deliver to West Europe are not so big right now, because there are still stocks of this variety in for example Spain, we know we just need to wait a bit to start with full time deliveries. Gala Royal, especially Shinga or Red Cap, are the varieties that customers seek most of the time. There is a little bit less availability of Gala, because there are not too many growers that want to open the ULO chamber in the middle of November, they just want to wait for a better price,” Krawczyk explains.
“But because we did a good job in the beginning of the season, varieties like Red Jonaprince, Jonagored and Idared could fill the gap, if there is a shortage of Gala. As far as I know a lot of companies also started selling huge quantities of apples to India, with loadings in September and October which is a fantastic news because the season for that part of Asia normally starts November or October.”
As Christmas approaches, Krawczyk hopes to push as much as possible before logistics prices start to rise: “We want to sell as many apples as possible before shipping prices rise before Christmas. Due to the severe shortage of truck drivers in Europe, prices will increase this year. The speed may be faster than last season. Because we are also using ports such as Trieste and Koper, we hope that the availability of containers will not drop. We also hope that customers who have not yet started ordering from us will start ordering as soon as possible.”
Krawczyk expressed the hope that the political issues between Poland and Belarus will be resolved as soon as possible, because it will definitely hurt the businesses of both sides: “Due to the immigration crisis, there is a lot of tension on the border between Poland and Belarus, so everyone is watching the situation very carefully. This has brought many challenges to our partners in delivering apples, and Belarus is one of the largest importers of Polish apples.