On Monday, in the Netherlands, the Berrybrothers team began picking the new season's first blueberries. "The timing surprised us a bit. With the wet, dark March and April, we thought we'd start a little later this year. However, the past few weeks' beautiful weather accelerated everything. With 25-26°C temperatures, the current weather is perfect for blueberry growing," says Nijs van Zuilen.
Berrybrothers has excellent yields hanging on the bushes. According to Nijs, that has much to do with the frost causing few issues this year. "Even the occasional rainstorm no longer damages the crop, besides hindering harvesting for a while."
"Then you have to find other jobs for your people. But since we have raspberry and blackberry crops too, there's always something to do," Nijs explains.
Just about all of the blueberries Berrybrothers markets reach Dutch consumers. "Right now, it's a demand market. Aside from the Netherlands and Germany, some Portuguese berries are on the market, and Serbia is also well-represented. Poland and northern Italy will soon follow."
"Italy has an excellent product, but it's a little pricey. We started with the Duke variety and will continue until late September. We focus on July and August, the true Dutch season. There's invariably more competition later in the season when berries start coming in from Peru again," Nijs continues.
This Dutch company picks all its berries by hand. "Price-wise, we cannot compete with machine picking, but we're sure our product comes to market with slightly better quality. They have a longer shelf life and look a little nicer too. We target the higher-end segment, and there's definitely a consumer group willing to pay somewhat more, both in greengrocers and certain supermarkets."
Like many other businesses, in other sectors too, Berrybrothers' labor costs have risen, and finding good personnel is becoming increasingly difficult. "In our case, the main challenge is being able to provide housing for harvest workers," says Van Zuilen. "We have 80 permanent, year-round employees, but during the peak, we have work for 350 people."
"You have to supervise all of them and give them somewhere to sleep. So given the challenges, it's tempting to harvest mechanically, and that's where it will go in the future. But for now, I think the technology needs further fine-tuning to approach manual picking's quality," Nijs concludes.
For more information:
Nijs van Zuilen
Berrybrothers
18 Nijken
6088 NR, Roggel, NL
Tel: +31 (0) 646 708 453
Email: n.vanzuilen@berrybrothers.nl
Website: www.berrybrothers.nl