Dried Apricot New Crop Market Update
News is in across this week that dried Apricot new crop is of a good quantity. The new crop has been recorded as a minimum of 3 weeks delay due to the cool weather during the ripening and drying period.
There are big disputes with regards to the crop size and quality. Most farmers are reporting that their dried yield is much more smaller that it was anticipated. Most of the farming complaints are discussion of the below.
Plenty of fruit on trees however, after harvesting they have witnessed that actually fresh fruit amount was less than it seems to be . This complaint seems to be relevant in the orchards that produce mostly medium and small size apricots.
Despite the above discussions, it is predicted that there will not be any major weight losses in theses specific orchards growing mainly #5, 4# 7# and 8#. The general consensus amongst farmers is a weight loss of 5% with generally good quality.
On following this, Some growers are debating that although they had normal amount of fruit on their trees and the size of the fruit seemed to be quite big , the actual outcome after drying much smaller that it was expected. This was made evident in the weighing process, usually they obtain 1kg of dried fruit after drying 4kg of fresh fruit, however, this season 6-7 kg of fresh fruit was needed to obtain 1kg of dried fruit. This complaint was common amongst larger fruit growing orchards.
These are considerable weight losses. These orchards fruit mostly produced sizes # 2 or # 3 instead of Jumbo or # 1. It is widely agreed that weight loss in these orchards is up-to 15-20%. Ripening of larger sized apricots takes a considerably longer time than other sizes. İt is believed that this year that these fruits were harvested earlier than they should have been.
For this reason dry material amount (sugar content) was less than usual and during drying weight loss was more than usual.
Considering the above, this season sugar content of the Dried Apricots is lower than usual. And sugar is the main preservative. This may contribute towards serious fermentation problems, especially low SO2. It is advised that clients must choose suppliers who provide quality drying facilities to avoid any fermentation problems .
Current information suggests that 2019 Crop is mostly Size # 4 , # 3 and # 2 and supply of Industrial quality is very limited .
To conclude on all of the above circumstances;
it is predicted that there will be 10-15% less quantity than estimated
Prices of industrial quality, diced , small sizes ( Size # 6 included ) will be higher.
It will be very hard to obtain Jumbo size and S# 1.
The Price gap between sizes will be smaller
It is expected that there will not be a rush from the supply side and demand will always be higher than so we estimate that prices will be in a ascending trend during the whole season.