The Kissabel® season kicks off with the orange and yellow varieties

The European partners of the IFORED project have started to market the first pink-flesh apples of 2020 and Kissabel^® Red will go on sale in October.

The new European Kissabel^® apple season has begun. The project partners in the UK, France and Switzerland started harvesting two coloured-flesh varieties: Kissabel^® Orange and Kissabel^® Yellow. The first variety features skin with an orange/pink pigmentation, intense pink flesh and a strongly flavoured, refreshing taste, while the second has a yellow skin, pink flesh and a balanced flavour.

With regard to the new season, the figures for the IFORED project’s partners are largely positive, both in terms of quality and interest from customers and consumers.

In the UK, the main feature of the new Kissabel^® apples will be their increased sweetness. “The harvest started in mid-September. We are very excited and very positive about the new harvest,” reports Anna Coxe, Head of Technical and Quality at Greenyard. “Our orange and yellow Kissabel^® varieties show a very good pigmentation and a very consistent internal colour. Their taste is excellent too, with a sweet, almost berry-type flavour. We had great feedback from retailers – they’ve never seen anything like Kissabel® before and they are looking forward to the new season”.

“We are expecting a great product – apples show overall good quality and are developing a good internal colour. We are expecting great taste too, with high brix levels,” says Hannah Martin, Commercial Director at World Wide Fruit. “Our Kissabel^® apples will be available from October – we are enthusiastic about the season and about the project. Kissabel^® are truly unique apples that deliver the ‘wow’ factor to consumers looking for something different”.

Similarly in France, the apples’ quality has lived up to expectations. “The new harvest shows continuity from last year – the apples look good on the outside and they have a nice pink colour inside. The taste is delightful too,” comments Marc Peyres, Export Sales Manager at Blue Whale. “Kissabel^® are the first red-flesh apples sold in quantity with success – it’s a completely new thing and we are very happy to be part of the project. There are a lot of new varieties on the market, but Kissabel^® apples are unique: amazing in the inside, new-looking and with an excellent taste too”.

“We are very positive about this season. Both the outside and inside colours are amazing, the quality is good and consistent with last year,” says François Mestre, co-manager at Mesfruits (France). “We already have big demand from retailers – clients who had Kissabel^® apples last year can’t wait to have them again.”

More good news has come from the market in Switzerland. “The harvest seems to be excellent: the size of the fruits is very good and the external appearance is very nice,” reports Christian Bertholet, Category Manager Fruits at La Montagne – Union Fruits Fenaco (Switzerland). “With the beginning of the season, we are sending samples to all our customers and also presenting Kissabel^® at an event with major Swiss cooking chefs”. There is huge interest in these new apples.”

After the Kissabel^® Orange harvest in September, the first Kissabel^® Red apples will arrive in Europe in October: red inside and outside, with an intense flavour and notes of red fruit, mainly grown in Italy and Germany.

Kissabel^® is the brand that identifies the different varieties of coloured-flesh apple – from pink to intense red – developed by the IFORED project, an international partnership involving 14 of the world’s largest production and marketing companies.