For fifteen years, Caribbean Trading & Shipping has focused on the import of tropical fruits and vegetables from the Caribbean. From Food Center Westland in Poeldijk, the Netherlands, Serge Budhai supplies market traders, general shops and wholesalers of tropical fruits and vegetables. The assortment of Caribbean Trading & Shipping can rightfully be called tropical, as they supply everything from long beans to Spanish limes, teroy to arrowleaf elephant ear, and peppers to water cherries. “With our own cultivation and export company in the Dominican Republic we like to try many tropical products. Because of this, we can almost always supply tropical fruits and vegetables which others do not have.”
“We import from the Dominican Republic and Uganda year-round, supplemented with import from Spain and Jordan, from where we are now importing okra. But we also have year-round supply of white, sweet potatoes and avocados,” says Budhai. “There were quite a few shifts in tropical sales. For example, habanero peppers experienced a sharp increase in recent years, but on the other hand, some products, such as breadfruit, which used to do very well, have sharply decreasing sales. A benefit to our sector is that as more and more Dutch people consume tropical produce, products such as long beans have become common.”
A limiting factor for the import of tropical produce from the Caribbean is the high cost of the Dutch Food Safety Authority controls, especially on products from the Dominican Republic. “We are talking about prices of 600 euro per sample per product, those costs truly are ridiculously high. For that reason we stopped importing certain products, they were just too expensive to import. That is very unfortunate for us, because especially products from our own cultivation from the Dominican Republic have a wide margin, and we are also investing a lot to get our entire range GlobalGAP certified. An additional advantage is that we have far less competition, because far fewer importers want to enter that market.”
Budhai faces the future with confidence. “Fortunately, people are becoming more familiar with the Food Center. Besides customers in the Netherlands, we also export to Switzerland, Finland, France and the UK, mainly mixed pallets. We try to have many customers from all over, just like our products. We import 25 products from the Dominican Republic, and we are looking forward to expanding our plantation in the coming years. We continue to do our best to introduce unique tropical produce on the Dutch market. For example, we are now selling plenty of dry soursop leaves and soursop tea. There is a huge demand for that.”
For more information:
Serge Budhai
Caribbean Trading & Shipping
ABC Westland 242 A10
2685 DC Poeldijk