According to Stefan Golubciuc, Chairman of the Association of Fruit and Vegetable Processors Speranța Con, this year the “fresh” domestic and foreign market is absorbing almost the entire volume of marketable berries and fruits that farmers manage to collect after unprecedented damage from spring frosts. If in previous years the volume of processing, in particular, strawberries, apricots and cherries at the largest canning factories reached many hundreds of tons, this year they have managed to buy only a few dozen tons of these raw materials”.
“We are forced to reduce production plans for some products by half on average,” comments Boris Efimov, director of Orhei Vit, commenting on the situation. – The current level of supply prices for berries and stone fruits does not fit into the standard economics of production of the main types of canned fruit products – jams, jam, jelly and puree for blended juices. Purchasing significant quantities of very expensive raw materials in the current unstable realities of the food business is, unfortunately, an unreasonably high risk. The market of fruit raw materials is now “overheated”. But there are signs that the situation is changing. For example, supply prices for such popular raw materials for canning as raspberries are gradually starting to decrease in Ukraine and Poland. It is not excluded that a decision will be made to import a certain amount of chilled raspberries for processing”.
