With more than half of the Royal Gala apples produced in South Tyrol this season now harvested, Italy’s largest topfruit supplier has confirmed a further significant decrease in the overall volume of apples expected in the region.
Speaking earlier this week at a special meeting to mark Vog’s 70th anniversary, the company’s managing director Gerhard Dichgans revealed that producers now anticipated a 10-15 per cent decrease on last year's record production of 2.46m tonnes, down from the 6 per cent drop forecast for South Tyrol at Prognosfruit earlier in August.
That would put this season's harvested volume at between 2.09m and 2.21m tonnes, rather than the 2.33m tonnes predicted at the start of August.
“The very hot summer has caused the apples to ripen very fast and some fruit has been damaged by the sun, so these cannot be sold as fresh. However, we’re talking about reasonably limited damages,” he told reporters.
“We are expecting sizing [for all autumn varieties] to be a little smaller than the forecasts, which is why I maintain that the -6 per cent forecast for South Tyrol is unrealistic. Also, a greater percentage of fruit will go for processing.”
Nevertheless, Dichgans said he believed this year’s crop was a good one. He also felt the market conditions were positive for Italian suppliers. “The market is fairly open at the moment and there is strong demand for Gala.”
New this season will be the first significant volumes of the sweet bi-coloured apple Envy, which Vog and another Italian marketer, VI.P is producing in South Tyrol under licence from New Zealand group Enza.
Vog is preparing to sell a total of 250 tonnes of Envy during this campaign, having sent trial consignments amounting to just 20 pallets to independent customers in Italy and Spain last year.
According to Dichgans, interest in the variety – which he described as “positioned squarely in the Fuji segment” is already high. “I believe in Spain and Italy it will be a huge success. It’s a variety that sells by word of mouth.”
