July 28 2006, 15:49

Zakarpattya canneries are not able to process supplied cucumbers

Zakarpattya canneries stopped purchasing cucumber for several days - the enterprises are overloaded with raw materials and are not able to timely process available volumes. Cucumbers are purchased now only from those producers who have preliminary agreed and signed contracts with the canneries. The canneries' commissions check from time to time the process of cucumber purchase at village collecting points where the sorting lines are located. They control absence of cucumber purchases from the suppliers who have not made preliminary agreements to supply raw materials to the canneries.

The producers state late July - early August to be the peak of cucumber harvesting season.

"Active harvesting of cucumbers will last for one more month, and than gross harvest will start to decline gradually", Vasiliy Voloshyn says, the Leader of VOLOSHYN farm.

In the period of active harvesting process the canneries decline purchase prices on $0.01-0.03/kg and set additional requirements regarding quality indices of the supplied cucumbers.

This year in Zakarpattya several companies have started for the first time to produce cucumber on trellis on the acreage 3-10 ha. This significant investment will hardly be paid off this year, to the opinion of Lyudmila Dzyamko, the Market Information Specialist of Zakarpattya office, Agricultural Marketing Project. In this period of time the companies have great problems trying to sell produced cucumbers. They have no working experience, so they missed an opportunity to contract cucumber supplies to canneries. Now the cucumbers are sold out of field for the price lower than the production cost. The situation is somewhat leveled due to the demand for cucumbers from the side of wholesalers from the neighboring oblasts. Thanks to it, the price for pickling increased up to $0.29-0.39/kg on wholesale markets of the oblast. Canneries pay $0.21-0.29/kg for pickling. Still, if the weather conditions are favorable, the price for cucumber will hardly be so high for a long period of time. Under influence of increased cucumber supply the price for pickling is likely to go down on wholesale markets; the price can decrease down to canneries' purchase price.

We'll remind that, according to the forecast of the Agricultural Marketing Project dated by March 2006, a significant price decrease was expected for cucumbers on fresh market. The forecast also said that canneries will probably offer lower purchase price for cucumbers; but the price will hardly be lower than $0.23-0.29/kg for pickling. Still, according to preliminary assessments, even more significant price decrease is possible in some regions.