"Leeks market already difficult within only a few weeks"

With leeks at the moment it is an uninteresting 'story'. "Many kilo's but low prices" grower Koen Franco summarizes the situation. "A few weeks ago it was better, but today prices are somewhere around 30 cents. That should actually be the minimum for this time of the year" he sighs. Grower Koen Franco has an area of about 10 HA and grows leeks almost all year round. Franco supplies his product to REO-Veiling.

Heavy leeks
"This difficult situation has already ran for about three to four weeks. Before that the price was 50 cents, even during a period 60 cents. Unfortunately the last few weeks it is even less. One of the reasons being that the leeks are reasonably heavy everywhere. The products must be removed from the fields. We are harvesting now at a slow speed because of the price. But we must go on because the leeks are heavy enough. If there is frost and they do not grow anymore we can wait. Now we cannot wait. They continue growing. That is the problem at the moment."

"What we need for supplying, is frost " Koen concludes. "Also to stop the leeks from growing. The volume being supplied now is not very high. I think round about 300 tonnes. We expect a heavy increase within three to four weeks now, round about Christmas. At least the supply will be doubled. This is the time the case, when the cabbages have been removed from the fields and the Brussels sprouts supply decreases. As long as the temperatures remain like this there will not be an improvement in the market situation. This cannot be predicted."

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Koen Franco