The Gala apple variety has become dominant in global trade in recent years. The Gala variety has been the leader for about 4 years even in the USA, where the dominance of the Red Delicious variety seemed firm. The variety is also popular in Ukraine, but, according to EastFruit analysts, the replacement of old varieties is too slow. Growers are trying to get the most out of old orchards with outdated varieties such as Idared or Renet Simirenko, despite the enormous difficulties in exporting them.

That is why, the stocks of Gala apples are exhausted by the end of January for the second year in a row. Large growers who have high-quality Gala store them to fulfill exports contracts, but such apples are practically no longer available on the local market. It was almost impossible to buy high-quality Gala on the domestic market in mid-January 2021, but the apple harvest in the country was much lower then.

According to the independent analytical project “APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits”, which has been monitoring the market of vegetables and fruits in Ukraine for 19 years, quality Gala apples can only be found in one retail chain in the country. However, the supplier’s stocks are also almost exhausted, and these apples will disappear from the shelves by the end of February.

Notably, growers assess the stocks of apples of other varieties as alarmingly high. They are not sure that they will sell all of them by the end of the season. At the same time, importers in Ukraine are mainly looking for Gala apples, as well as Golden, Granny Smith, Red Delicious and Fuji. By the way, there are serious problems with Fuji variety this year in Ukraine, which is usually the most expensive on the market. 2021 weather conditions were not suitable for Fuji apples. Therefore, their quality leaves much to be desired and is not exportable, with prices for Fuji being at a relatively low level.

“According to growers, apples of Red Jonaprince (a clone of the Jonagold variety) and Red Chief (a clone of the Red Delicious variety) are in good demand in the domestic apple market now. There were a lot of high-quality apples of these varieties in the harvest of 2021,” says Olexandr Khorev, head of the APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits project.

According to him, it is these two varieties that now dominate the exports of apples from Ukraine. Importers from Belarus are ready to even buy apples of outdated varieties, such as Idared and Jonagold, as apple prices are very high in Belarus after its self-isolation from the EU market.

Сообщение Stocks of apples of “Gala” variety in Ukraine are exhausted early for the second year in a row появились сначала на EastFruit.

The apple season in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere, which got the hashtag #freshapplecrisis even before its main start, is gaining momentum. According to EastFruit, harvesting of Golden Delicious apples started this week in Ukraine, but growers are not satisfied with prices for the first batches, as well as the sales in general.

Apple growers are now ready to ship Golden Delicious at 10-11 UAH/kg ($0.37-0.41/kg). The price range for good quality apples in Ukraine is still 8-12 UAH/kg ($0.30-0.45/kg), and the average price has already dropped by a third compared to last year and is at the level of 2019.

In addition to lower prices, market participants report that there is no active demand for apples from the main buyers.

Firstly, the Ukrainian market now has a large supply of hail-damaged apples. Buyers of the fresh market do not need such products considering that demand for higher-quality fruit is also low, and producers of apple concentrate prefer to work with previously contracted volumes. In this case, growers can receive no more than 3.50 UAH/kg ($0.13/kg).

Secondly, sales of all the main varieties on the market are stagnating, even when the harvesting of later apples has not yet entered an active phase. The weather also contributed to this, with the Gala apples season having started two weeks later. As a result, in the absence of active demand, the supply of earlier apples will gradually overlap with the season of later ones, reducing the overall price range in the market.

For instance, the starting prices for Gala apples in Ukraine were 12-14 UAH/kg ($0.39-0.52/kg) at the beginning of September, but by now they have dropped to 8-11 UAH/kg ($0.30 -0.41/kg), confirming the forecasts the APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits analysts made at the conference “Apple Business of Ukraine-2021”. Let us remind that if you could not attend this event you can get up-to-date analytics of the apple market in the research “Fruit and Vegetable Market of Ukraine-2021: Results and Forecasts for the Next Season” to be updated by the beginning of October this year.

Note that #freshapplecrisis refers not only to Ukraine, but to all key countries in the global apple market. For example, at the very beginning of the season, the prices for Gala apples in Russia fell by half at once, and in Poland growers have started protesting against low purchase prices of local retail chains. Moreover, many Polish farmers are even considering abandoning apple cultivation in favor of pears. Meanwhile, in Moldova, market participants also report low sales and there is an acute shortage of storage capacity while waiting for one of the largest apple harvests.

Сообщение Freshapplecrisis. “Golden Delicious” season starts with poor sales in Ukraine появились сначала на EastFruit.

According to EastFruit analyst, the crisis in the fresh apple market in Russia continued to worsen this week. Wholesale prices for apples of the first autumn variety “Gala” harvested now in the southern regions of the country fell immediately by 10 RUB/kg or $ 0.14 to $ 0.55 per kg.

In a week the price for Gala apples dropped by 20% at once, and in two weeks – by a third. However, previous seasons are the most interesting to compare with. The prices for apples are already 1,5 times lower than at the same time last year even in rubles, despite the delay of the harvesting and selling season of Gala apples this year by an average of two weeks in most countries of the region. Actual prices for apples in Russia are now the lowest ever recorded in this period of the year.

Such a rapid decline in apple prices on the Russian domestic market and low-price levels given rising transportation costs led to a sharp slowdown in Russian imports. Fruit importers pay no more than 50 US cents per kg to deliver apples to Moscow, but the prices are too low for Moldovan growers.

As for the supply of Gala apples from Serbia to Russia, Serbian exporters are now actively looking for alternatives to the Russian market. Indeed, taking into account the cost of transportation, exporting to Russia is currently unprofitable.

Сообщение Prices for Gala apples collapsed in Russia появились сначала на EastFruit.

In early September, growers in Moldova started harvesting apples of the Gala variety. Some large growers are planning to send first apples to Russia by the end of the first week of September without the mediation of local traders/exporters. The price range is 6-7 MDL/kg ($ 0.38-0.39/kg). It depends, first of all, on different clones of Gala. As farmers say, “the redder the fruit, the higher the price.”

Concurrently, some big traders began to purchase Gala apples for export from the very first days of harvesting. Purchase prices offered to farmers are 5-6.5 MDL/kg ($ 0.28-0.36/kg), if delivered to sorting centers of buying companies in containers. According to the heads of large agricultural enterprises, these traders take apples in bulk even from farmers who have post-harvest infrastructure and could sort or pack fruits at their own bases. Apparently, the reason is that traders have orders for apples of a certain quality in a container of a certain type.

As EastFruit reported, at the end of last month, one of the Moldovan traders, working closely with Russian supermarket chains, offered local farmers a very high price, 10 MDL/kg ($ 0.56/kg), for Gala apples of at least 70 mm caliber, in European-style cardboard boxes. But apparently, this was an isolated case.

However, given the rather high yield of Gala apples this year, the growers in the “apple” regions of northern Moldova consider prices established at the beginning of the 2021 harvesting “adequate even for high-quality apples – from orchards that did not suffer from hail and scab”. The prices for Gala apples, even of low quality, were significantly higher at this time last year- 7-8 MDL/kg ($ 0.42-0.48/kg). But the growers admit that apple prices in Moldova in September 2020 were “overstated due to the projected low yield and expected high demand for Moldovan apples in Russia in winter.”

In 2019, when MDL/$ exchange rate was similar, the starting purchase prices for Gala apples on the Moldovan market ($ 0.33-0.39/kg) were approximately the same as this year. These two seasons are likely to be similar in terms of apple production: in 2019 – 610 thousand tons, in 2021 – presumably about 600 thousand tons.

Experts note that, despite the slightly delayed start of harvesting, the weather conditions are favorable for it. Nevertheless, they recommend that it be carried out in a short time, since rains in early September can affect the quality of the fruits.

According to expert estimates, in Moldova, varieties of the Gala group account for about 7% out of the total 50 thousand hectares of ​​fruit-bearing apple orchards.

Сообщение Harvesting of Gala apples started in Moldova with a wide range of prices where the quality pays off появились сначала на EastFruit.

Since the beginning of this week, Ukrainian producers have been receiving more and more messages about completing sales of residual batches of Gala apples. According to the regular monitoring data from the APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits project, producers not only had problems with completing batches for export but also had difficulties with sending products to the domestic market despite lower quality requirements from local buyers.

“Even despite the fact production growth for the main Ukrainian fruit in 2020 was confirmed, running parallel was also an increase in the share of low-quality products, which is difficult to sell even on the domestic market not to mention for exports. As a result, since the beginning of 2021, high-quality apples on the Ukrainian market have begun to increase in price and the range of the main varieties offered will be reduced by at least one position in the near future,” says Alexander Khorev, the head of APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits project.

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As of mid-January 2021, the sale of apples from storage facilities have already been completed and almost all volumes of medium- and low-quality products in the country have been exhausted. As a result, the price range for an apple in Ukraine narrowed somewhat to 8-17 UAH/kg and the average price increased by 1 UAH/kg to 13 UAH/kg in relation to the last days of December of the past 2020.

Thus, according to the APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits project, the Ukrainian market meets all the prerequisites for a further rise in prices for apples from the 2020 harvest and this fruit is likely to continue to rise in price in the country. However, at the moment it is still quite difficult to predict to what level the price growth will continue since they will be influenced by changes in apple stocks in neighbouring Poland and Moldova in the spring months of 2021.

Сообщение Prices rising as apple stocks in Ukraine are nearly depleted появились сначала на EastFruit.