The trade group U.S. Apple Association of Falls Church, VA held a webinar following the December 1st update on the amount of apples remaining in storages.
Chris Gerlach, USApple’s director of industry analytics, said the total figure was about 190 million bushels — 140 million of those bushels are in fresh apples while 51 million remain in processing.
“The last time we had a total holding of this size in November it was the November 2014-15 season with 188 million bushels — 144 million bushels in fresh and 44 million bushels in processing,” Gerlach said. “For the most part, we’re right on par with the production with the fresh crop there.”
Gerlach said one deviation from the 2014-15 figures is the number of apples in processing this season. He suspected with a down market last year, processors used the opportunity to fill holdings then.
“It’s a big year,” said Gerlach, who added that fresh apple holdings are closer to 40% greater than a year ago.
Washington state contributes the majority the year-over-year growth. The state is up 38% over last season, which is equivalent to 42 million bushels and about 90% of total growth in the U.S.
New York state’s 15 million bushels is 10% of the national growth; its crop is up 44% year over year.
Michigan shows a 6% decrease year over year, but at 12 million bushels, it is down only 1 million bushels from 2022 and still above the state’s five-year average.
“These states account for about 94% of remaining storages,” Gerlach said.
Honeycrisp, gala, red delicious, granny smith and fuji make up 76% of the total apple holdings. Gerlach said USApple pulled Envy out of the “other varieties” category to track its growth individually moving forward. Apple growers harvested 4.2 million bushels of Envy apples this season.
Cosmic Crisp experienced a 41% year-over-year growth with 9.5 million bushels harvested this year.
Gerlach noted that there are two mindsets for how this year’s crop moved through before December. He said if using the figures set in August by the USDA, it looks like a sluggish movement of apples in storage. However, Gerlach said he suspects the crop is higher than projected and therefore moving at a better rate.
He said the figures in the USApple movement tracker shows a 17.8-million-bushel differential between November and December, up 81% year over year, with varieties coming in and out of storage. Gerlach suspects with apples coming in and going out of storage, that figure could be higher. Washington state moved 16.3 million bushels in November, which is up 97% year over year.
Gerlach said by comparison, using the 2014-15 season, data from the tracker shows only 14 million bushels for November. So, apple movement this season tracks considerably higher.
“With the 18-million-bushel figure, we are exceeding the net movement in the November 2014 time frame,” he said. “There’s no reason to think we’re dragging our heels.”
Gerlach noted net movement of varieties show gala moving 4.4 million bushels, up 74% year over year. Honeycrisp movement is up 105% at 3.7 million bushels. Movement of granny smith apples is up 204% at 3 million bushels. Red delicious rounds out the top four with 2.1 million bushels, up 53%.