This has been a difficult year as per Mohamed Marawan, owner of Polish exporter of apple Sarafruit. He believes that the problems that plagued 2023 will continue to the next year “In my experience, 2023 was not a good one for everyone people involved in the apple industry, because the issues with global environment and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as well as the ongoing conflict in Palestine along with the ongoing issues with inflation and economics in Egypt were all significant issues that continue to persist. It is our only hope that 2024 will be a more positive year.”

Marawan says it’s been difficult finding new markets to export the product. The blocking in the Red Sea made things even harder. “Looking at the year we had for apples, the most difficult part was opening doors to new markets for our apple. After this issue was resolved and a new challenge popped up because it was hard to locate top quality apples. The quality was essential in order to get the longest transit time and as if this wasn’t enough blocking the Red Sea made things even more difficult. Transport times increased while freight costs added to transportation costs.”

Because demand has been lagging this year, there are no markets that are really announcing themselves as an opportunity to buy the Polish apples this year. Marawan states: “In 2023, we were focusing on the purchase of our brand new facility that is currently being constructed currently so we’re not yet working towards achieving this objective. If you’re looking at the sale of our fruit in 2023, we’re not entirely happy. This was an overall tough year for apple exporters and they had be able to accept an unavoidable reality. When you look at the markets that were doing well I’d guess that the markets we have which include Egypt, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and India all had a fair share of their possibilities. The sales were slow, and no one of these markets was an obvious favourite.”

While prices for apples are up currently, there’s not a any indication of whether these prices are going to remain that way until the end in the year. Certain apples in Poland are being kept however the higher prices are putting pressure on demand, Marawan states. “The apples are priced higher than in previous years, however we’re not sure of what’s going to happen in the future since there are still the apples in coolers. In the meantime, demand has been slower due to the current higher prices and the current economic conditions in the world. In the end, we can see that the larger picture of things at the moment, we don’t have the whole report of the outcome for the entire season. In 2024, we’re hoping to be able to build our construction of a new facility. We’ll also be taking part in some of our expeditions, create an extensive network, and look for new opportunities and possibilities including emerging markets for exports.”

More information is available here:

Mohamed Marawan

Sarafruit

Tel: +48 537935155

Email: office@sarafruit.eu

www.sarafruit.eu