Moreover, in March on the European market demand for apple concentrate remained weak and prices continued to decline. Thus, if in winter in some periods on the European market sellers had an opportunity to sell limited batches of clarified concentrate of medium acidity at the price of about 1.6 thousand euros per ton, in spring, against the background of low demand, prices of few transactions shifted to the range of 1.4-1.5 thousand euros per ton.
Additional pressure on the market was exerted by the information that by the beginning of spring apple stocks in a number of EU countries exceeded last year’s figures for this period by dozens of percent. In Poland the stocks of apple by the beginning of March were close to 0.9 million tons, in Italy they amounted to about 1.1 million tons. In other words, there were more factors of pressure on prices than factors of their support.
Situation on the Moldovan apple market
As reported Logos Press, in February 2026 Moldova exported slightly more than 11 thousand tons of apples. This is about 500 tons more than in the previous month. But 2 thousand tons less than in February last year.
According to market operators, there is usually a direct correlation: high export demand is associated with intensive sorting (rejection) of dessert apples and, accordingly, an increase in the supply of substandard apples to concentrate factories. When exports are low, the opposite is usually true (at least in the winter months when the apple has not lost quality during storage).
In January-March of this year, only two Moldovan factories accepted apple for processing. According to their estimates, no more than 1-1.5 thousand tons of “apple from refrigerators” was processed into concentrate during this period. This is a relatively slow rate of processing for the off-season. At the end of last year – beginning of this year, specialists of the Association of Fruit and Vegetable Processors Speranța Con predicted that during the winter and spring months, concentrate producers will process about 10 thousand tons of apples of the harvest-2025. However, the current dynamics of the Moldovan industrial concentrate market shows that unless there are some significant changes close to force majeure, it will be difficult to fulfill such a processing plan until May-June in a calm mode.
The issue is the price, but not only
In winter-spring the price for industrial apple in Moldova was within the range of 2.5-3 lei/kg, depending on the conditions of delivery to the factory. Last year, processors paid a little more for raw materials in the off-season. In February, farmers began to actively probe the market for potential price increases – both for dessert and industrial apples – but did not learn anything inspiring. There is background demand, but no one is trying to stimulate it with price increases.
Moreover, the downward price trend on the European market of apple concentrate, as its Moldovan producers-exporters believe, does not offer preconditions for changing the production strategy. Probably, purchases of last year’s apple will be moderate, at the existing prices. At the same time, there are strong chances that apple concentrate producers will enter the new season of processing with unrealized marketable residues of the product of last year’s raw material.
