The report, published by Washington state based Belrose Inc forecasts that the leading production countries will continue to boost supplies of fresh product onto the world market, but their imports are unlikely to increase as fast. The report focuses on projections for the apple trade to 2010.

Southern hemisphere suppliers are forecast to contribute more than half of the increase in net exports as their imports are not expected to grow significantly.

The forecast for the EU, which is the world's largest apple importer predicts that imports will become static over the next seven years as production within the union expands. The US and Canada are likely to see imports stagnate as domestic production continues to be strong.

The good news is that the report's authors do not expect the net impact of huge producers China and Turkey to be as great as feared. Turkey's exports are forecast to 'stall' and provided China maintains its economic growth, imports should also continue to increase.

'What is urgently needed is a major breakthrough in the World Trade Organisation discussion on agricultural trade liberalisation,' finds the report.

But the apple industry cannot afford to wait for tariffs to be lifted and an expansionist marketing strategy is needed. 'Apple growers will have to allocate a higher proportion of their budgets to promotional expenditures,' warns the report, concluding that the global apple trade needs to 'get convinced and ...get cracking'.

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