July 21 2005, 16:13 Agrarian Marketing Project

The canneries in Poltava oblast face difficulties purchasing the needed volumes of cucumber

The processing enterprises of Poltava oblast started to purchase squash actively and got interested in the fruit group. In particular, they are seeking for the possibility to purchase apples for apple juice and apple concentrate production. We'll remind that a year ago the majority of the processors give up these produce groups and focused on more feasible cucumber and tomato; but, exactly a year ago the harvest of these crops turned out to by significantly lower than expected.

This year the situation with cucumbers on Poltava oblast market is rather complicated again - the cucumber plantings suffered much because of diseases and pests, so the enterprises have to fill the lacking segment by the alternative assortment. As the enterprises refused to process squash past year, in 2005 the majority of farmers shortened the acreage of this traditional crop for the oblast; squash yield is always reasonably good irrespective of the season. Moreover, the lack of raw materials is a standard problem for the produce industry of Ukraine. For example, the canneries in the southern regions of Ukraine are trying now to capture vegetables of late varieties out of the region, as the raw materials of the local production are obviously not enough. So the southern processors compete for the raw materials with their colleagues from the central and northern oblasts.

The cucumber plantings in the oblast are not in the best state; getting persuaded of that, the processing enterprises increased 10-15% the purchase price on cucumber in Poltava oblast. It seems that this season the processing enterprises in the central oblast of Ukraine can not count on the significant decrease of the purchase price on cucumber.