Last November, the SICA Saint Pol de Léon opened a new endive production site. This new production facility in Kerlouan includes refrigerated rooms for root storage, growing rooms and a packaging site, which will enable the cooperative to expand its production.
In Brittany, endives are grown on the sandy soil of the Côte des Légendes in the Finistère. Photo credit: L'œil de Paco
Developing production in Brittany
At the moment, the endive production of Prince de Bretagne involves 15 growers, with a total of 4,500 tons of conventional endives and 600 tons of organic endives. The new production site has a potential of 1,500 tons. “The aim is to satisfy the current demand, and to continue to raise prices, give producers prospects and motivate them to set up their activity.”
According to Xavier Abiven, president of the Prince de Bretagne endive department, “endive volumes have decreased in France. Yet, there is significant demand, especially locally. With a large number of retirements and a crop that requires almost 400 hours of labor per hectare for transplanting, we needed to find a collective solution to revive production among young people. With this new tool, we are going to return to our production level of 4 years ago, which is 6,000 tons. We hope this will bring a new dynamic to the region.
The SICA producers grow endive roots in open fields to diversify their rotations with a short crop (from May to November/December). The roots are then transported to the production facilities, where they are placed in growth chambers before being harvested in the packaging room. All operations are coordinated by SICA.
For more information:
Emilie Bardin
Prince de Bretagne
[email protected]