Midway through the Blue Whale apple export campaign, supply and quality are looking positive with expectations for late varieties to last until the end of May.

Compared to recent years, the French fruit exporter and apple grower is making considerable gains on volumes supplied to Europe and has generally increased the length of the season because of high quantities of Joya and Pink Lady.

“"The season is not yet finished because we still have the rest of this month, April and May to carry on with our export campaign because we are seeing more of the late varieties coming through,"” Blue Whale commercial director for export Marc Peyres tells www.freshfruitportal.com.

"“This is an improvement and increase on past seasons. It’s somewhere between a 10% and 15% increase on previous seasons.

“"Apart from Pink Lady and Joya, we are also continuing with the Granny Smith variety as well because we have high volumes. For Europe we are focusing on quality, conservation of the fruit and we have a good freight rate so we can export to this area without any problems.”"

The story is different for Asian markets, which despite their obvious potential, remain ‘niche’ areas for Blue Whale because of high competition coming from China.

"“The Asian market is also quite important of course especially during the first six months of the campaign.

“"However, the Asian market for fruits from Europe is still a smaller niche market because we are producing at the same time as China so we tend to concentrate on special markets like the high quality or high-end markets.

"“Overall it's a very positive season but there are markets that are a long way from Europe and getting into them is quite a complicated process. We need to have the right fruit, quality and capacity to secure these markets.”"

The three key markets for Blue Whale, which supplies to around 80 countries worldwide, to break into are Japan, Korea and Australia.

"“There are a number of countries that we do not have access to at the moment which could be significant for us.

“"Of course we would like to make headway in these three large markets but this is not something that will happen tomorrow. Japan and Korea are probably the more competitive markets because of the local crops.

The new market where we should have access but which is not open to Europe, is Australia. It’ is open to the U.S., New Zealand and to China and so why not to Europe? It is something that I do not understand.”"

Lead photo: www.shutterstock.com

www.freshfruitportal.com