Pink Lady's Cousins

The popular Pink Lady® brand apple with it’s flowing heart logo has many things going for it beyond it’s sweet taste. They store extremely well so are able to be stored for up to 12 months but supplies can often be tight, and according to Christy Warnock, Operations Manager for Pink Lady America, LLC they often look to the Southern Hemisphere when supplies are short and even have new varieties, cousins if you will, of the apple that fill in when consumers can’t find her.

Warnock: We even have new varieties that like the Barnsby apple that mature about three weeks earlier than crisp pink, so that fills in some of the gap when we run out of the one season’s apple before the Southern Hemisphere new crops come in. This new three month early apple still looks like a Pink Lady® , tastes like a Pink Lady®, has the right texture and meets the brand promise. When consumers l taste it they can’t necessarily tell the difference between a crisp pink and a Barnsby but it does still fall under the brand. So that kind of fills in the window so you can actually get a 12 month supply of Pink Lady® brand apples.

And watch for your supermarket apple cases for a new apple called a Mazlan which is another early version that can go under the Pink Lady® label in North America. Warnock says they are hitting the market pretty heavily with it. A recent consumer survey from Pink Lady®America shows huge market growth potential for Pink Lady® brand apples in North America. I’m Susan Allen with the Fruit Grower Report.