Ukraine Walnuts Update September 2021

In this market update, several growers have actually been able to look into what has been going on since the harvesting of the walnut crops began in Ukraine. The overall result so far has been that on a quantitative level, the crop appears to be the same as last season. However, there are several differences in the physical attributes of the crop, which will be discussed below.

Since the crop is still being collected, and has not been shipped yet, there is still much to be learned about this season’s harvest. On the plus side, since the wholesale prices of inshell walnuts and walnut kernels have significantly risen, this seems to be a good news for the industry.

As mentioned in the previous report, this means that a producer can easily get about 30 to 33% more from a high quality kernel than this time last year.

Properties Of The New Crop

Since there has been a lot of precipitation in Ukraine, the harvesting started late. There was also the issue of drying the wet nuts. It appears that the weather conditions have actually impacted the physical nature of the new crop as multiple growers have reported a lighter colour for the walnut. Similarly, multiple sources have said that there are bigger sized crops from the previous year. Of course, this isn’t much of an issue as we know that every buyer has their own requirements for the size.

The best case scenario in this situation is that there will be a 20% increase in crop, based on the numbers coming in on the harvest but this can only be confirmed once all the crops have been harvested.