Fruit processors unwilling to raise buying price of apples

Processing companies are apparently not in the mood to raise the buying price of apples from 0.8 lei to at least 2.2 lei a kilogram as the apple growers entreated a week ago. Igor Boxan, purchase manager for the fruit company Natur Bravo, has told Info-Prim Neo that the price offered by the company depends on the final price of the finished product on the external market. In calculating it, companies use such criteria as transportation costs, which is 0.25 lei per kg on a median radius of 120 kilometers, and the production cost, which is €200/tonne of juice concentrate that consumes some 8 tonnes of fresh apples. The representatives of processing companies say the buying prices of apples will rise when the juice concentrate on the external markets will grow dearer. And this is very unlikely to happen because of the fierce competition from China and Poland, which can afford much lower prices, at 2009 forecast outputs standing at 30 million and 2 million tonnes, respectively. According to the data of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry for 2007, processing companies collected 170,000 tonnes of fruit, 85.4 percent of which were apples. Roughly 90 percent of the apple juice concentrate is sold to Germany. The final buying price of apples is going to be determined this week at a meeting between Agriculture Minister Anatolie Gorodenco, farmers and processors.