NZ apples

New Zealand's apple exporters must keep a close eye on how fast this year's Northern Hemisphere crop sells in key markets so they can react accordingly, says Ian Palmer, chairman of industry association Pipfruit NZ.

He added that recent comments from producers in the country pointed to a large crop of Braeburn in Hawkes Bay and a full crop around the Nelson region. 'This indicates we could be up around the 15.5m-16m tray carton equivalents,' he said.

Speaking in the latest edition of Pipfruit Newz, Mr Palmer said the fact that the US state of Washington was expecting its largest ever crop at 113m cartons meant his country's export trade needed to be fully aware of how sales progress during the first half of this year.

'We have to be mindful of watching the sales rate of this large crop, because of they are too slow, it could well impact us significantly,' he said. 'The Washington State forecast surpasses their previous best of 104m cartons. The extra volume is more than half our export crop.'

With production in the EU also described as full and a large back-garden crop expected in Germany, conditions on the European market could well be different this year to those seen in 2008.

'If sales rates are too slow, a different market will greet us this coming season,' said Mr Palmer.

Pipfruit NZ is preparing to publish its national crop estimate for 2009 in late January.