Jos Hermans from Herten in Limburg is busy harvesting the summer apples and summer pears. The grower combines his fruit cultivation company with a large store in Roermond-Zuid, where, in addition to fruit, vegetables, and nuts, bakery and butchery products are offered as well. "We have been harvesting Delbare apples for two weeks now. The harvest seems to be 8% smaller than last year, but all in all it's a nice, average harvest. Due to the drought, the apples are turning out a bit lower."
The sandy soil, which heats up quickly in spring, has the advantage that the grower is always early with harvesting the fruit. That's mainly ideal for the summer apples. "The old harvest is gone. At the end of the season, the Jonagold was too sweet, so people are really waiting for new apples. The first ones are always the most expensive. So they are very popular in the shop. Prices are at around one Euro, making the apples a bit more expensive than last year," Jos says. After the Delbare apple harvest, the grower is hoping to begin harvesting Elstar apples on September 1. The harvest of Clapp's pears has also started already, and next week he is harvesting the first Triumph.
The Hermans Fruit cultivation mainly consists of Elstar and Wellant apples, and Conference pears. While commercial manager Marc Evrard of the Belgian Fruit Veiling had a plea for the Jonagold apple as the new success story on this site, Hermans prefers to go for the Elstar. "This sweet and sour apple is popular in the Netherlands and Germany. The Jonagold is more popular in the southern countries, and so it's logical that the Belgians are focusing on this more. Personally, I only anticipate increasing competition for the Jonagold from Poland in the next few years, and the advantage of Elstar and Wellant is that those varieties don't do well in the Polish land climate."
Hermans Fruit has managed their own sorting and sales of their fruit through in-house sales for thirty years, but also to small retailers, mainly in neighbouring Germany. Its customers are located a few miles away, just across the border. "The Ruhr region has 12 million inhabitants. 100% top quality every day, that's what customers want. Without a lot of publicity, we're able to sell our apples well there," Jos says.
The combination of a fruit company and the shop is very important, the entrepreneur says. "Last year, the fruit company had a difficult time, but the shop actually did well. In that sense, it's a spreading of risks. Last year, fruit sales really went well all season, only the prices were at a low level. That was remarkable, because usually a low price always means bad revenue. Only at the end of the season, when the market had been drained did prices go up, but we haven't really been able to profit from it. This year, we're hoping to get 10 or 20 cents more for the apples."
For more information:
Jos Hermans
Hermans Groenten en Fruit
Oude Roermondseweg 161
6049 AD Herten
info@hermansfruit.nl
www.hermansfruit.nl
Hermans Groenten en Fruit
Oude Roermondseweg 161
6049 AD Herten
info@hermansfruit.nl
www.hermansfruit.nl