Abundant outdoor vegetable harvests not only in the Netherlands but across Europe are creating difficult sales conditions for many products. "For example, the leek trade has been challenging for a long time. This summer, several growers stopped after summer leeks remained low-priced for consecutive weeks," observes Jordi van den Bosch of Freeland Outdoor Vegetables in Emmen.
"Similarly, sales of celeriac are limited to pallet-by-pallet volumes rather than larger batches, and prices are almost historically low. But this situation of high supply and low prices is visible across the board. Storage facilities everywhere are full. A good frost could certainly boost consumption and sales of some winter vegetables," the exporter continues.
© Freeland"You can see that regular customers keep buying, but buyers can hardly believe their luck in this market, with so many companies accepting minimal margins just to keep things going," Jordi adds. "Onions are moving in large volumes to West Africa, but we are not active in that region. Not only in the Netherlands, but also elsewhere in Europe, onion growers are recording near-record harvests, so storage sheds are full and buyers are sourcing onions closer to home."
Run or stand still
For years, Freeland has been importing Egyptian spring onions during the winter season. "This is traditionally a market of run or stand still. Good quality is essential because spring onions spend around ten days in transit from Egypt via Italy or Slovenia. Fixed purchasing and solid agreements with customers therefore play an important role, because the free spring onion market is only truly profitable for a handful of days in the season. For most of the season, everyone has enough spring onions, and everything arrives on the same boat," concludes the exporter.
For more information:
Jordi van den Bosch
Freeland Outdoor Vegetables
Nijbracht 126
7821 CE Emmen
Tel: +31 591 670576
[email protected]
www.freeland.nl
