After a quiet vacation period, business is picking up somewhat at Elite Foods in Flanders. "Trade usually drops about 20% around this time, but that's slowly starting to recover a bit," begins Tuncer Akarca of Elite Foods, which specializes in Elite vine tomatoes.
"The market, however, is still quite balanced. That's mainly because July was quite dark and cold. Supply was, thus, slightly disappointing in early August, which also upped tomato prices during that period. But, that supply began recovering a week ago, and declining prices immediately reflected that. Now we have to wait for demand to follow suit, which should, like every year, happen in a few weeks."
Belgian supply preferred
The company offers Belgian Elite TOVs from early April until New Year. "That combines summer cultivation with lit winter cultivation. Still, as is generally known, growing under lights was quite problematic last winter. We offered significantly fewer Belgian tomatoes due to high energy prices. We then, therefore, focused more on the Turkish supply to be still able to meet all our deliveries," says Tuncer.
Most lit cultivation will resume this winter, so he expects to keep offering the usual Belgian Elite tomatoes on the vine. "That's nice because our customers prefer these tomatoes' quality. That's also shown by their willingness to pay more for genuine Elite vine tomatoes. We use our own Elite packaging, and being next to BelOrta is ideal for quick responses to any issues or changes."
New site
Elite Foods moved to larger premises in June last year. "It's around 50 meters from the previous site. We grew enormously recently, so moved to a location where we could stably continue this growth," Tuncar explains. With the move, the export company has gone from approximately 1,000m2 to roughly 2,700m2 of area, of which about 1,700m2 is cold storage.
Akarca points out that they, nonetheless, had to slow down lately. The company could not quite keep up with its own success. "For several years, we've thus focused on good organization that lets us keep expanding nice and organically. That still results in good, stable growth of ten to 15 percent annually. That we could recently develop our own Elite TOV package, I think, proves we're now on the right track."
Tomatoes, the main focus
Besides tomatoes, Elite Foods offers the full range of Dutch and Belgian fruit and vegetables. "I reckon about 90% of the products we export are Belgian, supplemented by a small portion of Dutch vegetables," continues Tuncer. "We export mainly to Germany, which makes up around 70% of our customer base. But we have clients in countries like Austria, Sweden, Romania, and Serbia, too."
Tuncer indicates that tomatoes, despite the never-ending quest for assortment expansion, will remain the company's main focus. "I feel we stand out in this specialization. Next to bananas, tomatoes are the world's best-selling fresh product. There's a world to win here, and I believe we can also keep growing nice and steadily with this," he concludes.
For more information:
Tuncer Akarca
Elite Foods
64 Kempenare Street
2860, Sint-Katelijne-Waver, BE
Tel: +32 (0) 156 33 746
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.elitefoods.be