Increasing demand for Valentine's Day apples from Poland

Pricing for the Polish apple season continues to remain stable, with prices for the premium varietie…

Pricing for the Polish apple season continues to remain stable, with prices for the premium varieties, such as Gala and Red Prince, at the same level as last year.

Andrzej Mierzejewski from Polish exporter Cool Fruit, said that they are sending their supplies of Royal Gala, Gala Must and Red Prince to western markets such and Spain, Portugal and Slovenia and that the less expensive varieties such as Champion and Idared are sent to their traditional markets like Belarus and other eastern European destinations.

Along with regular apples, Cool Fruit also offers apples with special holiday messages, including 'I love you' apples for Valentines Day. Shipments of these special apples begin in the middle of January and are destined for Western European countries like Holland in particular, but also to Spain and Croatia.

This is the third year that Cool Fruit will be offering the decorative apples, with demand for them increasing each year, with around 100,000 pieces being sent out this season.

"The increasing demand is not just coming out of foreign markets, but has also increased in Poland. We had only sold limited quantities of these in the domestic market in the past but more and more customers are asking for them every year." said Andrzeij.

When the apples are on the trees in the summer, a special sticker is placed on the skin with the message which appears as the apple ripens with the sun. Once harvested, the stickers are removed and the apples are placed in storage and only opened before the holiday's they were produced for, like Christmas and Valentine's day.

"We select large, high quality, firm apples to carry the message which are able to be on the shelves with no quality issues for up to 3 to 4 weeks, which gives our customers ample time to sell the apples." concluded Andrzeij.