August 3 2007, 14:55

Ukraine: prices for apricot stay high

The enterprises - fruit processors faced the difficulties purchasing apricot this year. Despite of the almost finished season, many processors could hardly form the raw material base able to supply the needed volumes of apricots. Some enterprises just failed to implement the apricot purchase plan. Large shipments of apricot were occasionally supplied from the farms to market; the enterprises had to purchase most part of apricots from the population. In most cases the quality of the purchased apricots was poor.

Apricot supply was insufficient on the freshmarket too. As a rule, Ukrainian farmers sold their produce on city markets; the supermarkets traded imported apricot almost the whole season. The managers of fruit&vegetable purchase of the leading supermarket chains say, the imported produce enjoys stable demand among the national consumers primarily due to good quality (appearance and packing); nothing is left to say regarding the national apricot. Also, the managers can purchase large volumes of imported produce from one supplier; national apricots are to be collected among a lot of various suppliers.

The specialists of ""Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" weekly" forecasted this situation as early as in April in connection with the unsatisfactory harvest in many farms of the southern regions of Ukraine. A part of orchards suffered from spring frosts; a lot of fruits fell because of drought in summer period. So, the prices for apricot stay high enough during the whole season. However, the average price is a little lower than a year ago when practically all apricot was destroyed by frosts.