Spanish apple producers will lose more than €52m this season unless the current sales price is raised by at least €0.15 per kg as producers struggle to deal with rising costs and lower prices, Fepex has warned.
Research commissioned by Catalan fruit association Afrucat shows that the price of Spanish apples has fallen by 3.5 per cent in the first months of 2022 compared with the year-earlier period.
At the same time, production costs are up 40 per cent. This is due principally to higher energy prices but labour, packaging, storage and transportation costs have also increased significantly.
As Spain’s leading apple producing province, Catalonia would use around €26m, while Aragón and Castilla y León would also incur serious losses Afrucat said.
Joan Serentill, president of Fepex's pip fruit committee, said: 'we find ourselves in an alarming situation in which apple prices at the point of sale have not only not increased in relation to the rise in costs, but actually gone down, endangering the viability of our farms”. Serentill pointed out that there are still more than 26m kg of apples in Spanish stores that are due to go on sale in the coming months.
He said growers needed to pass on cost increases in the sale price to 'at least balance the accounts and not put thousands of jobs at risk”.
