"Demand for ripened stone fruit, kiwis and persimmon takes flight"

LBP Rotterdam recently announced it was going to extend its capacity with another eight ripening cells. These new ripening chambers, which have been realised by Van Kempen Koudetechniek will be ready halfway through this month. "Ripening avocados and mangos has become normal over the years, but we are getting more and more demand, both from producers and suppliers as well as importers and retailers into ripening kiwis stone fruit and persimmon on location. We have been doing this for one customer for a while. But now we have been extending these activities to other customers. At the moment the demand for ripening mangos and avocados is the biggest, but when the overseas stone fruit season bursts loose at the end of year, we will be ready for this product category," says Anton Filippo.

Consumers want to be able to eat their fruit from their fruit bowl. The demand for Ready-to-Eat fruit is taking off and so we have high expectations of this development, which is why we made this investment. It would be suicide to say no to this," says Anton. "At the moment there are relatively few suppliers and we can distinguish ourselves from others with this. Personally, I believe that if this development continues, there will be a point when everyone will do it. At the moment slightly more is paid for ripened fruit, but I expect there to eventually be the same price level as unripened fruit."

"We can see very clearly that we are in a company branch in which we can only survive if we go along with the newest developments. This is why we continue to search for new opportunities in the market. Under the heading 'one-stop-shopping' we aim to facilitate all logistic activities under one roof for our customers. We have come slightly closer to this aim with the realisation of these new ripening cells."

For more information:
Anton Filippo
L.B.P. Rotterdam BV
Honderdland 50,
2676 LS Maasdijk
Tel: 0174 - 530545
afi@lbprotterdam.nl
www.lbprotterdam.nl