Consumers in Europe and North America could soon be buying and eating more so-called ‘gold’ apples, after the developers of a new variety secured licensing deals with leading counter-seasonal suppliers in the Southern Hemisphere.
South African grower-exporter Dutoit Group and New Zealand's largest topfruit producer Mr Apple have both agreed deals to plant the variety, marketed worldwide as Opal, joining Chilean groups Polar Fruit, Frusan and Concha as grower partners of master licensee DMW.
Developed in the Czech Republic, the Golden Delicious-Topaz cross was originally conceived as an alternative to Golden Delicious for European consumers, offering scab resistance, tolerance to mildew and resistance to blight.
At present, Opal is marketed by two companies in Europe and the Mediterranean – Univeg's recently acquired subsidiary Empire World Trade (EWT) in the UK and San Lucar in Germany and Austria. In the US, it is grown and marketed by Washington-based Broetje Orchards and its commercial arm First Fruits Marketing.
A total of 375,000 trees have been planted in Europe so far, with around 16,000 cartons of the branded fruit sold in the UK alone last year.
New openings
Hannah Surtees, senior trading manager at EWT, told Eurofruit promotional activities in Europe would be ramped up in 2014/15 and are already having a noticeable impact.
'Our first branded season launch in the UK was a great success,' she said. 'Retailers and restaurants are already excited for next season and more crop being available, as they have had growing demand for the product over the 12-week season we have in the UK at the moment.'
Surtees said she believed Opal could carve out a sizeable niche within the apple category. 'I think Opal brings a great vibrancy in look and flavour to the UK apple market, in a sector which has been centrally focused on bi-coloured apples as the source of new product development.'
Key to achieving that goal will be changing consumer perception of yellow apples. 'Opal faced a specific challenge with the UK apple shopper: a pre-conceived prejudice that a yellow apple would be soft, old and flavourless, everything that the Opal-branded apple was not. It was vibrant in flavour, fresh and crisp.'
By interviewing shoppers, EWT has established that Opal has the potential to stand out within the apple category and won't necessarily eat into the existing market for green and red varieties.
'Visually, it became classified as a category by itself,' Surtees noted. 'What the Opal brand did is unify all apple shoppers with its exceptional eating quality and flavour characteristics.'
Consumption of yellow apples in Europe is said to have declined over the past decade, although Golden Delicious still accounts for around 20-25 per cent of all apples produced in Europe.
