This year, it is likely that 55,000 tonnes of apples will be harvested, and the cultivars grown in Croatia are of excellent quality, however, the good trends on the market are disturbed by the import of low-quality apples, the Smarter consulting company says in an analysis.

The harvesting of apples is being done this year in extremely favourable weather conditions, and the total yield is estimated at 55,000 tonnes, which is lower than in 2019, when 68,352 tonnes of apples were picked in Croatia.

Both apple growers and wholesale traders are very satisfied with the high quality of this year’s fruits, and the market has been supplied with domestic apples since August, when the first Gala apples were ripe for the picking.

Smarter warns that some importers who started importing apples of poor quality and low prices influenced the trends on the market to the detriment of local growers and farmers.

Most imported apples were from Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The analysis also shows that this year in Croatia the growing of Idared, a type of apple cultivar, has fallen to 13,000 tonnes from 33,000 tonnes last year. The production of the Gala variety has increased by 3,000 tonnes since last year, and the Golden Delicious variety rose from 8,000 tonnes last year to 15,000 tonnes in 2020.

Also, the amount of Janagold apples increased by 1,300 tonnes, and the amount of Red Delicious apples jumped from 500 tonnes in 2019 to 2,135 tonnes in 2020.