Belleharvest in ongoing quest for new apple varieties
Belleharvest in ongoing quest for new apple varieties
“We are happy with where we are,” said Christopher Sandwick, vice president of sales and marketing for Belleharvest Sales Inc., located in Belding, MI. But ideally the company strives to be a specialist in new, tasty apple varieties.
“We continue to try and elevate our status in new varieties from around the world,” Sandwick said. The effort doesn’t instantly pay off but it’s “a long play” to achieve the goals of having new types of apples that taste good and have other unique, new high qualities.
“We are active now in many breeding programs to position ourselves to be ready as new opportunities present themselves,” he added.
Christopher Sandwick, vice president of sales and marketing for Belleharvest Sales Inc. Belleharvest will be shipping Honeycrisp from its controlled atmosphere storage until the end of January. “That’s quite a good length of time,” Sandwick said. “We seek to extend that” storage period in the future.
The popularity of the Honeycrisp “caused more and more people to become involved in growing and selling” the special variety. To meet demand, it’s important to keep extending the storage period for Honeycrisp, he noted.
Relating Honeycrisp to the search for other apple varieties that will be very popular, Sandwick commented, “Honeycrisp is an anomaly.” The fruit is so good that there may not be another variety that matches that popularity. Still, he said, “There can be something between the Rome and the Honeycrisp.”
Sandwick acknowledged that retailers can only handle a limited number of apple varieties. But there can be variety transitions as consumers like the flavor and texture of oncoming new varieties.
Sandwick noted that apple growers are competing for shelf space with commodities such as Clementines, grapes and strawberries, which are also aggressively being bred for improvement.
He added that the produce industry’s greatest competition is “Twinkies” and other such processed foods.
The 2014 “season is progressing very nicely for us,” Sandwick said.
This winter’s f.o.b. prices are comparable to last year, Sandwick said. “Now that we’re into controlled atmosphere, there is more pressure on pricing. In the fall, we have a nice bump from ‘local’ demand. That really helps us. That wanes at this time of year. Now we are more subjected to the market.”
The national apple industry is watching what Washington state shippers are going to do with their large crop. There is a question as to how much volume exports will take away from Washington volume that will otherwise need to be moved in domestic channels.
