"The winter is going very well," said Bruce Heeren of Michigan Fresh Marketing LLC in Belding, MI. "Demand has been strong since the start. Apples are holding in storage just fine. The inventory will ship into July, like normal. And the prices, I'd say, are right in line with a year ago or slightly higher on some things. Movement is very good."

Mr. Heeren said that his firm has had "different promotions with different customers like any other year. It's been a good season so far. No complaints. Quality has been good. Fruit size is bigger than normal, so it has worked out well. We have no problems with this season so far. It's gone very well."

Denise Yockey, executive director of the Michigan Apple Committee in DeWitt, MI, confirmed Dec. 22 that the Michigan apple storage crop sales "are moving well. We're selling a lot of them. Obviously we could sell more. People are feeling pretty good about this apple-selling season. We just had a very good year, with high sugar [content]. We started real strong in the fall."

Ms. Yockey said that the Michigan Apple Committee is "going strong with our promotions. We hope to keep Michigan apples front and center. Michigan apples are a perfect size for snacking."

Don Armock, president of Riveridge Produce Marketing Inc. in Sparta, MI, said, "This season ended up with very strong movement. We're ahead in double digits of other seasons with similar-sized crops." Such success is attributable to "demand being very good because we had a very warm growing season, so the Brix levels were a couple [degrees] higher than normal. So the flavor is very good. We also have good hard fruit consistently." On Dec. 20, he said that Riveridge had just opened its controlled atmosphere storage, which was a month earlier than normal.

Mr. Armock continued, "We normally pack and ship 11 months -- sometimes 12. This season we probably won't be because we are ahead of pace. We picked a crop this season that packed very, very well, but the business has pulled us ahead. We are likely to pack for 10" months after the 2005 harvest. Riveridge usually ships the Gala variety into April. "This season we'll be fortunate if we make it into March" with Gala.

Is it good for the industry to finish early?

"It's a good thing in the respect that this crop has such high sugars," Mr. Armock said, "so it's better not to market it in early August and September." It is questionable, he noted, if such high sugar fruit will store for 12 months. Furthermore, selling it early "is money in the bank and then you come back and grow them next year."

On the other hand, Mr. Armock said, "It's better to be in the marketplace. As customers make buying decisions, they look at what they did last year and do the same the next year. If we were out of the marketplace for two months, it tends to impact us the coming season."

To maintain a place in the apple market, Riveridge imports South American apples in the spring when its Gala season ends. This spring, Riveridge will import Gala, Braeburn, Fuji and Pink Lady apple varieties. Similarly, Mr. Armock said that his firm also buys McIntosh from the Canadian Maritime provinces. As a result, "Last year we had Macs until mid-August although we had long completed [Michigan] McIntosh." He does not expect McIntosh to be available this year past July. "When we finish with Macs, there is liable to be a two-month gap versus the two-week gap" between the end of the storage crop and the beginning of the 2005 fresh crop apples. He reiterated, "In some instances, that is counter-productive for the next year."

(For more on the Michigan apple deal, see the Jan. 9 issue of The Produce News.)