Thanks to a much larger harvest, Washington apple shipments to foreign markets are up 127% over the previous season as of mid-November.

“The export numbers look fantastic,” said Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission.

“The volume is up, but we also have more high quality, consumer choice varieties available,” he added.

According to the commission, nearly 5.87 million cartons had been shipped to export markets as of Nov. 12.

In 2022-23 at the same point, about 2.54 million cartons of Washington apples had been shipped out of the country.

The percent of the harvest exported this season is 28% so far.

Fryhover has said that he hopes to export 30% of this crop.

“We’re getting close to where we need to be. We would like to see some improvement in domestic and export sales,” he said.

This year’s Washington apple harvest was expected to jump 29% to roughly 134 million boxes, well over the 104 million boxes from the 2022-23 crop.

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That prediction might not have been ambitious enough, Fryhover indicated.

“We’re up somewhere between 30 to 35 million boxes,” he said.

Nearly 25% of exports are going to Mexico, with 766,000 cartons, and Canada, with 684,000 cartons.

More than 4.4 million cartons have been shipped offshore, according to commission statistics.

Fryhover said fairly significant volumes of apples were moving into India, first of Gala, and now Red Delicious.

Exports to Central America and South America are up nearly 150% over the previous year.

“They focus on Christmas, so the timing to get fruit down there and in the marketplace is right now,” Fryhover said.

Washington’s top crop is apples, and the harvest in 2022 was valued at $2.07 billion, up 3% over 2021. Apples accounted for 16% of the state’s total agricultural production in 2022.

Washington is the No. 1 producer of apples in the United States. Roughly 6 of every 10 apples grown in the country come from the Evergreen State, according to the commission.