"Demand for celeriac got going in February"

The new celeriac season is almost here once again. Pierre Sweep of the eponymous winter vegetable trader from Zevenbergen expects a smooth transition from the old to the new season. "We are starting with the new harvest next week, which means we are over a week ahead of previous years. We will have old and new harvest at the same time for around a week and a half, but I'm confident we will get through it."

"The new harvest, however, is still of excellent quality, so we can still supply the faraway destinations with it for a while, as it makes a longer storage period in the logistic chain possible, whilst we can supply the new harvest to our customers in the Netherlands and Germany," says Pierre. "In other years it was critical to make July, but now we're making the end of the season easily. This is a direct result of a number of changes, such as growing on 75 centimetres rather than 50 and harvesting with the potato harvester rather than the beet harvest, with which we have been able to lift the quality level to a higher level."

The past celeriac season has had a sort of divide. "The sales went well in terms of volume, but until January/February the price level was just low. Then the German market turned out to be empty and the cold in Poland hit the local cultivation, which meant the price rose considerably, unexpectedly, by an average of 5 cents per week. Now last year taught us that a strongly rising price has a direct influence on the demand, so we tried to keep the price level reasonable and made agreements based on our own stocks first, to keep the pace going. This worked, as the volumes left still sold for a good price."

For more information:
A&P Sweep
De Langeweg 9a
4762 RA Zevenbergen
Tel: 0031 (0) 168-327750
Mob: 0031 (0) 6-53155323
pierre@sweep.nl
www.sweep.nl