English apple producers are looking forward to a good season this year, despite difficulties with the weather.
Adrian Barlow, chief executive of English Apples & Pears, said: "It’s not a vintage year, but it is a good year. English apples are famed for their taste and this year consumers are going to be very happy with their taste."
Compared to other food producers, Barlow said the recent wet weather had actually benefited the apple crop, leading to juicier apples, although there had been fears the wet conditions would cause headaches with the harvest.
However Barlow is hoping the dry spell will hold to allow growers to pick easily.
The lack of frost earlier in the year had raised producer hopes for a bumper crop, however, the dull, cold weather during flowering affected pollination and rather than have clusters of fruit, producers have ended up with a lot of single fruit on the trees.
Fruit sizes are going to be generally larger this year, particularly on Cox, said Barlow: "There will be some Cox we won’t be able to market because it’s simply too large. However we’ve had a lot of conversations with the multiples and they’ve agreed to take larger sizes this year.
"We’ve also had to get them to reduce the amount of fruit sold in polybags, and they’ve been co-operative, we’ve had terrific support from the multiples."
In volume, he said Cox is likely to reach around 40,000 tonnes, which is down by around 15 per cent on last season. Barlow expects prices to be around £1.59 a kilo.
Gala is also likely to have fallen 15 per cent to around 14,500t this year while Egremont Russet is expected to be unchanged at 5,000t.
Braeburn is forecast to have a good season with around 2,500t predicted, up from around 1,000t last season.
Barlow said: "We’re expecting Braeburn to get to around 10,000t over the next five years. The multiples all want Braeburn, and most of them want to have English Braeburn."
Conference pears are likely to reach 31,000t this year, which is up around five per cent, and fruit is also large.
Bramley has also bounced back this season, with Northern Irish supplies seeing a big increase. Volumes are looking likely to reach around 90,000t, with around 55,000t coming from English supplies and the rest Northern Irish.
Overall, supplies are expected to be around 40 per cent higher than last year.
"This year they’ve had a good crop, which is great news because for the last few years we’ve had insufficient volumes to meet demand," said Barlow
The English season is also likely to benefit from the fact the Continent’s crop has been lower than normal, which should mean a little less competition for UK producers to deal with.
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