EU export boom - The European Community exports more apples than it imports
In recent years, the trend regarding the directions of sales of European apples has been strengthening. The European Union, despite the closure of one of the main markets for apples, which is the Russian Federation, slightly increases the share of exports (mainly to new markets), while accepting less and less apples on its internal market.
According to the data presented by the European Commission, after the Russian Federation closed the market for European fruit, the export of EU apples began to decline successively. After the export peak in the 2014/2015 season (when more than 1.782 million tons of these fruits were exported from EU countries), the progressive decline was mainly due to Poland’s significant share in the production of these fruits, with the country’s high dependence on the Russian market. EU exports gradually decreased until the 2019/2020 season, in which it amounted to 1.069 million tons (the exception was the 2017/2018 season, when exports were much lower, but resulted from spring frosts, which significantly reduced the apple harvest in many European Union countries).
From the 2020/2021 season, the export of apples produced in EU countries began to gradually increase. In this season, it amounted to 1.101 million tons, and in the following season – 2021/2022 – it reached 1.115 million tons. Thus, a slow stabilization can be seen in the management of European apples on world markets, bypassing the then main recipient, i.e. Russia. The role of new markets for Poland, such as India or Egypt, is significant here. Recipients from these countries are demanding as to the quality of fruit. Since fruit production in the territory of the European Union is subject to high restrictions on plant protection product residues, exceeding the standards of non-Community countries, fruit produced in the EU is of high quality with a low content of plant protection product residues or no residues. This is evidenced by the positive results of numerous inspections of apples intended for export.
In this context, the role of the internal EU market seems to be very interesting, where the supply of apples produced in the Community has been stabilizing for the last few years. Since European apples are tasty, and the amount of plant protection products used is minimized in their production, the role of imports of these fruits from external markets is gradually decreasing. Over the last 10 years, there has been a steady decline in the supply of non-EU apples on the European market. The exception is the aforementioned 2017/2018 season, when imports clearly increased due to the low supply of fruit produced in Europe.
In the last 10 years, imports of apples from outside the EU fell twofold. In the 2012/2013 season, it reached 608 thousand tons, while in the 2021/2022 season it was only 311 thousand tons. A clear decrease in imports has been observed since the 2018/2019 season, when imports of apples from outside the EU amounted to 459 thousand tons, in the 2019/2020 season imports amounted to 399 thousand tons, in the 2020/2021 season – 326 thousand tons to reach 311 thousand tons in the last season. Data for the current 2022/2023 season is not yet available, but comparing the monthly trading results for the period from August to December, it should be noted that in 2022 the Community imported 79 thousand tons of apples, while in the same period of 2021 it was 152 thousand tons. Europeans are more and more willing to choose native apples, aware of their qualities.