Poor weather in France and unexpected breakdown in fruit from Western Australia will shorten arrivals of the variety.

Pink Lady is the fastest growing variety in the UK, with an average 50 per cent rise in sales each year since it was first introduced into the market.

'Major flooding in the Languedoc and Provence growing regions left orchards and packhouses under half a metre of water, but we have not heard of any significant culls of the crop yet,' said Gordon Winterbottom of Coregeo. 'The French crop should still hit initial forecasts of 58,000 tonnes. French fruit is not due to arrive until the first week of November and we still expect it to, but there may be some extra caution from exporters who do not want to jeopardise the premium price point of the brand with less than perfect quality.' The failure of the Australian crop to last the course has caught a number of suppliers and retailers short of programmed volumes. 'The Australian crop is likely to be around 40 per cent short. Growers stopped sending large volumes of fruit as soon as they realised breakdown was occurring and there will be a period of shorter supply from now until the first arrivals of Spanish and French Pink Lady,' said Winterbottom.

'It is a blow for us,' said Marcus Hoggarth, apple buyer for the UK's leading Pink Lady retailer Sainsbury's. 'Pink Lady sales were looking exceptional up to a week ago and we have had as much as 40 per cent of the market at times this year.

'Now we have to make the decision whether to put it on the shelves at all, as we cannot afford to allow consumers to think we're taking liberties with a variety that they are being charged relatively high prices for. The industry as a whole has to take a sensible approach to marketing it in order to protect the premium status of the brand.'

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