EastFruit analysts draw attention to an interesting trend in Poland.
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Despite Poland being one of the world leaders in the exports of fresh apples, at times displacing China from the first place in terms of exports, it has ever more clearly shifted its focus from the exports of apples to the exports of fresh pears in recent years.
“Over the past five years, Poland has been increasing its exports of pears at an average rate of 23% per year, or almost 13 thousand tons, and reduced the exports of apples by 4% or 34 thousand tons per year. At the same time, Poland increased its pear exports faster than any other country from the world’s top ten exporters of pears. Since bad weather had an equally negative effect on both apples and pears, this factor can be ignored. Thus, the shift in trends in favor of pears looks quite obvious.” explains Andriy Yarmak, economist at the Investment Centre of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Due to the rapid growth in pear exports, Poland became 9th in the world among the leading exporters of pears, surpassing Italy and Portugal, by the end of 2020. According to EastFruit forecasts, based on information from Polish sources, Poland could export more than 100 thousand tons of pears in the 2020/21 season for the first time. The export of pears from Poland was only 25 thousand tons five years ago!
In the structure of Poland’s fruit exports, pears are currently ranked fourth in terms of revenue, after apples, frozen berries and fresh blueberries. Experts foresee that the revenues from the export of Polish pears will only grow.
The USA (by 8 thousand tons per year), Italy (by 11 thousand tons per year) and Chile (by 5 thousand tons per year) are reducing the exports of fresh pears. China, the Netherlands, Argentina and Belgium remain the leaders in the global ranking, exporting about 1.5-1.6 million tons of fresh pears annually. These four countries account for about 58% of world exports. ■