The New Zealand apple crop is significantly down on early season estimates.
With the harvest nearing completion, industry body Pipfruit NZ has said that final volumes for early varieties such as Cox and Pacific Beauty are about 15 per cent behind estimates made in January and the trend on later varieties is looking similar. Forecasts at the start of the year had indicated a crop of some 17.8 million cases.
Pipfruit NZ CEO Peter Beaven said: “Our assessment is that this year’s Braeburn crop will struggle to get past last year’s volume of 70,000 tonnes.
“This would make it the equal smallest crop in the past 10 years.”
There has also been some hail and a recent storm in the Hastings area which will have an impact on final packout and Beaven believes many growers will put fruit that has not coloured up sufficiently into the processing market.
There is more Royal Gala being exported to the UK from a number of origins this year, but Gary Jones, services manager at Pipfruit NZ, does not believe the country will be part of this trend. “We doubt that the volume from NZ will be up as exporters are more focused on Asian markets,” he told freshinfo. “The [European] continent is down on stock of all varieties compared with previous years and Braeburn exports from NZ will be low.”
Jones added that Cox volumes are the second lowest ever, but with a small average size there should be enough to meet UK programmes. And despite ongoing supermarket battles on price, Pipfruit NZ reports that pricing is slightly higher than in 2010.
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