The crash in the southern hemisphere apple market in Europe in the last few months has been blamed on the shipping of “too many, too bad, too cheap apples” over an extended season, claimed Karl Schmitz of BVEO in Germany.
Speaking at last week’s Southern Hemisphere Congress, he laid the blame at the door of exporters, singling out New Zealand for particular criticism. “Exports from New Zealand were definitely detrimental to world price levels,” Schmitz said. “There were too many European import agents, handling too much fruit from too many NZ exporters at prices below cost. New Zealand has exported its internal problems, rather than the first class apples it exported in the past.”
He gave a 10-point list of reasons for the major problems in the world apple market, including oversupply from all sources. “There were 7.5 million tonnes of apples eaten in Europe last year, this year we will have between 8-8.5mt. Even if that extra fruit is given away, as per capita consumption is stagnant, there is not a buyer.” The Russian import ban, “which had a lot to do with corruption”, he said, significantly upped the volume on the western European market, compounded by the underestimation of the European crop volume and the arrival for the first time of serious additional quantities of apples from Poland and China.
Schmitz also blamed Smartfresh for prolonging the apple season unnecessarily. “The carryover of apples on the market does not help anybody. From July to September this year, there were the same varieties available from three seasons: the ‘old’ 2004 European crop; the 2005 southern hemisphere crop; and the new northern hemisphere crop, all of similar quality. In this situation, everyone loses, from the grower to the consumer, and figures show that consumers do not eat more apples because they are cheaper,” he said.
“The apple industry has to take action now. We all have in common the same products, the same buyers and the same consumers, but we also all have in common the same problems - which we can only solve together.”
