"Netherlands: "Chicory market profitting less from frost damage to winter vegetables than hoped"

It's reasonably quiet in the chicory market. "It's running, but it's not exactly wild", says Aren-Jan Kardux of Reijnpack, The Netherlands. "Due to the frost many winter vegetables, such as leek, froze to death, and we were hoping that would create more demand for chicory. But we're not unsatisfied about the prices. They're a lot higher than last year."

Aren-Jan gets the impression that the chicory supply is sinking. "In the past few weeks there has been a lot of a variety which produces a lot of kilos and that supply is reducing a little. We don't have any quality problems. I do get the impression some foreign suppliers do, because we're receiving demand form customers we've never supplied before."

A lot of chicory finds its way to Italy a country that Aren-Jan sees as a growing market. "This is probably due to a lower supply of French chicory. The sale of loose chicory is held up reasonably by the supermarket promotions. The packaged chicory is mainly dependent on the export."

Kardux is optimistic about the prospects for the coming period. "But I usually am. We, as chicory growers can all moan about supplying for bad prices, but we control that, so then just don't supply!"