"European Apples" project director, Daria Turk, said that the project aims to intensify its presence in the Egyptian and Algerian markets over the next two years, noting that the campaign is being implemented by the Association of Polish Fruit Growers. She added that the project seeks to maintain its exports to Egypt during the current year at 250 containers of 5,000 tonnes, after falling back in 2015. She explained, on the sidelines of the HACE Hotel exhibition, that the Egyptian market has a special attractiveness in terms of its ability to absorb large quantities of apple imports compared to other markets. She added that Egypt acquires 240,000 tonnes per year of Polish apples, which accounts for 15% of the total production of 1.6 million tonnes from 450,000 feddans. Turk said that the current season's production of apples in Poland has seen a decline, driven by environmental changes and weather conditions affecting trees. She pointed out that supply prices this season are higher than previous seasons as a result of the decrease in the total volume of production. She added that the project contracts with Egyptian importers only, and there is no reliable statistics on the distribution of consumption rates of Polish apples among individuals and factories in Egypt. Egypt is the second largest importer of apples from the European Union, accounting for 13.3% of exports, only preceded by Belarus that takes 16.4% of exports, with China in third ranking. Poland leads the list of the largest EU producers of apples by 25% (1.6 million tonnes of 6.4 million tonnes in total) followed by Italy with 19.2% and France with 15.5%.
