The Dutch blueberry season started early this year, but there is no happy summer start. "Compared to last year - which was a late season - we're even two weeks earlier, but I wish we had had a late season," says grower Sil Moonen, who grows blueberries in both Limburg and Drenthe. The fact that the cultivation areas are over 300 kilometres apart is not just a result of limiting risks, but also to lengthen the season. The season in Drenthe starts two weeks later than that in Limburg. "The advantage is that we can almost always have a fresh product. Yesterday our pickers in Limburg were rained out, whereas our employees in Drenthe could pick all day."
"The prices were immediately put under pressure at the beginning of the summer due to the large supply from Spain with an uncontrolled sales of over more than a million kilos of blueberries. Then Russia closed the border for fruit and vegetables from Poland and all the Polish berries were dumped on the Western European market, followed by the border closure for the whole of the EU," the grower explains the difficult sales. "Add to this that the weather conditions over the last few weeks have not been cooperative in supplying high quality berries, which can be cooled for a long time. Worse, rejections are common at the auctions and the quality is a lot lower than in previous years."
"There haven't been any cultivation areas in Europe this year in which a lot of product was lost due to hail or night frost. Top productions were noted all over Europe. We also have a production like we haven't seen for years, but this has caused the prices to sink to the bottom, ones that we can just grow them for. This worries me. More soft fruit is being sold every year, the sales are rising especially high in the United Kingdom, but huge amounts are also being planted and there will be a huge crop in a number of years. I'm sometimes afraid that we're heading down the same path as the apples with the blueberries. There is a limit somewhere after which the supply is greater than the consumption and I believe it's closer than most people think."
Moonon has a solution for extending the sales. "Dutch and British retailers tend to stick stubbornly to the 125 gram packaging. In the Netherlands only Albert Heijn offers the blueberries in 300 grams at the moment, but in Germany a 500 gram packaging is no exception. I'm convinced that people who buy blueberries could just as easily have taken twice as much home if they were supplied in larger packaging." The grower, who mainly sells his product in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany, introduced a shaker and a matching box to stimulate sales. "The sales of the shaker aren't running riot yet, but I remain convinced that an exclusive product such as the blueberry deserves a better presentation than the standard."