The Spanish tomato season has gradually started again. "As usual, you can see a combination of the harvest from the old summer plants and the new harvest on the market this year. Of course the former isn't of a desirable quality, but it does happen," says Ger Kingsma, responsible for the Spanish tomato import at Hagé International. "Due to the sweltering summer - it's still very warm in Spain - Spanish growers planted later to limit the pressure from disease. Because the Dutch supply is also limited, this is causing good prices at the moment."
"I expect the Spanish season to really get going from week 44," says Ger. He expects there to be few changes in the tomato area. "Less is being grown at random in Spain. You can see that the growers are specialising more and more. You can't just grow tomatoes one year and courgettes or peppers the next. The knowledge needed is too specialised. You can see that the specialists have their set place in the market and rarely deviate from this. Customers have to indicate more and more what varieties they want to buy. This makes the relationship between supplier and customer increasingly closer. Products like round tomatoes are no longer planted at random, in contrast to previous years."
"How the season will go is largely dependent on the year. Last year had extreme weather. I do expect more competition from Morocco in the snacking tomato segment this year," continues Ger, who is hoping to speak to a lot of Spanish growers again this week during Fruit Attraction. "More and more Spaniards are choosing to be present in Madrid rather than the Fruit Logistica in Berlin. "The costs for this are lower and the fair isn't as massive. I expect the importance of the Fruit Attraction for Spanish growers to continue to increase."
For more information:
Ger Kingma
Hagé International
Tel: 0031 (0) 180-657702
G.Kingma@thegreenery.com
www.hage-international.nl