08/15/05 Emerging apple markets

The Washington Apple Commission has a preliminary budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year set at over $5.7 million dollars, and no real changes expected in how its international marketing program is funded from last year. Commission President Dave Carlson says the only change is the potential phase out of the Philippines' market to a maintenance, if not elimination, phase. CARLSON: That's been a diminishing market with less than 100,000 cartons last year, mainly due to Chinese competition there. But having said that, the Commission believes the time is ripe to bring two potentially large export markets into the fold. What could be lost in the Philippines is expected to be gained and surpassed over the next two years with another market & Russia. CARLSON: Russia last year had some pretty good numbers, close to a half a million cartons. We think that could be upwards of a million cartons within the next year or two. Also on the radar screen is India which has a growing economic middle class and a desire by world name retailers like Wal-Mart to enter into that market. CARLSON: Their method of retailing is moving more into supermarkets. That's a slow effort. India is just in the process of changing their laws so that they can have some of the retail outlets owned by foreign interests.