April 3 2007, 17:00

Champignons go expensive

According to information provided by ""Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" journal", the prices for mushrooms start growing before the Easter holidays on Ukrainian market. The journal specialists evaluate that the wholesale prices have increased 3-5% since the pervious week; however, the price growth is likely to speed up soon. The prices for oyster mushroom have not significantly changed yet. But, the supply of this mushroom is still very low on the wholesale markets.

According to our earlier forecasts, the same trends are observed on Polish market as well because of the coinciding Easter holidays for Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant concessions this year. So, the demand growth has been already observed on Polish mushroom market; the prices for this product have increased almost $0.2/kg during the recent week. Due to the champignon export to Germany Polish producers expect the mushroom prices to grow further this week.

Andriy Yarmak, the Expert of "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" weekly journal informs that fresh mushroom often competes with meat on the food market. The greater the price difference for mushroom and meat is, the higher mushroom consumption will be. At the same time, mushroom is typically sold in the produce sections of supermarkets, so that the buyers compare the prices for this product with the prices for other produce items. The consumption of fresh mushrooms is growing by rather great rates, so that this branch forms a sphere of a great interest for the large players.

You can gather the details of mushroom production development perspectives in Ukraine from the reports made by the best experts of mushroom industry. The experts will speak during the largest event of the mushroom business in GIS, the second international conference "Mushroom Industry-2007". The conference will be held in Kyiv on June 12th-14th 2007 in the framework of the same-name international exhibition.