The top fruit market had to jump quite a few hurdles this year. “Fruit is being sold, but shelf life in particular isn’t great. That means you have to pay even more attention to your storage management,” says Kees van Ossenbruggen of the top fruit production, sorting and trade company of the same name in the Netherlands. The company has chosen to invest in a new packing station and an access road directly to the N320 in future. It should all be ready before the new top fruit season starts on 1 August.
New access road under construction.
“Last year, sales of apples went smoothly, but as is often seen in fruit, cards have been dealt differently in the following years. Besides, the best quality and sizing still yield the most money. For example, sales of good sizes of Elstar are still doing fairly well, but the large apples don’t yield much,” Kees says. “After the dry weather, hopes became quite high, but despite this, a lot of apples still turned out larger. In the irrigated fields, sizes became too large, while the non-irrigated fields resulted in apples with a poorer shelf life. All in all, batches will soon be lost, so that they’ll have to be sold quicker.”
“In pears I think the sales of good Conference are going fairly well, as long as there’s a harvest. However, Buerré Alexander Lucas isn’t doing well at all, and I think sales of cooking pears are just so-so. A lot of pears on the market have small defects as well. Additionally, political influences, such as the Russian boycott and Brexit, continue to be negative on the pear trade,” Kees concludes.
For more information:
Van Ossenbruggen Fruit
Bulksestraat 1
4031 JW Ingen, the Netherlands
Tel: +31 344 60 19 68
kees@ossenbruggenfruit.nl
www.ossenbruggenfruit.nl