Consorzio Vog (the Vog Consortium), which encompasses 13 farming cooperatives in Trentino, Italy, has said that it expects the 2016/17 apple harvest to be down on previous years, according to a report by Gdoweek.
The group said that this year’s harvest was particularly affected by weather damage to production areas.
Production is expected to stand at 9.3 million tonnes for the season, according to fruit association Prognosfruit, however Consorzio Vog director Gerhard Dichgans is sceptical if this can be achieved.
Losses
“The losses are enormous”, he told Gdoweek. “And Trentino is not an exception to the rule. We had to correct our estimates because of hailstorms at the beginning of August.”
According to the group, a 15% decline is expected for the Gala, Red Delicious and Morgenduft varieties, with Golden Delicious down 35%.
“We are now one-third of the way through the harvest,” Dichgans said. “It is now crucial to collect apples at the right maturation, in order to guarantee shelf-life requested by customers”.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Francesca Volpe. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
