The winter months are far behind us now, so ZON has looked back at their experience during the second season of Spanish produce being auctioned. Together with project leader Els van Herpen, ZON magazine looks back at the second season.
A growth in the total 'Spanish' turnover of over 100%, growth in the total 'Spanish' volume of 50% and a growth in the number of customers that bought Spanish produce of almost 35%: it immediately shows why manager of auction sales Els van Herpen, also project leader of the Spanish product supply, is so satisfied when looking back at the second season in which ZON auctioned Spanish produce over the winter months. "Let there be no mistake, figures like these are certainly cause for satisfaction. But I'm at least as happy that the Spanish cooperations that we work with, the customers and of course our own members are very positive about this second season. We have put together a sound board group from various product commissions, with growers in it with whom we discussed all of the affairs around the supply of Spanish product previous to the season. Last fall the growers clearly indicated that we had to make sure that there was a good switch from the Dutch to the Spanish product. We started phasing the supply based on this desire in the second season. It's good to see that the group is satisfied with how we handled that after the end of the second season, I'm quite proud of that. Due to the smooth switch from Dutch to Spanish product we were also able to bind customers to the auction and prevent them from buying elsewhere in the mean time."
Teething problem
In the 2015/2016 season, which had the character of a pilot, various administrative actions had to be carried out, which were quite labour intensive. The project is now so well on its way that most administrative matters can be taken care of automatically and so are more efficient. "We viewed a few matters as teething problems, but it's nice to be able to determine most of them are gone after the starting phase. The evaluation talks that we carried out two months ago with Spanish cooperations we work with, clearly show they are satisfied with matters such as transparency in price information and bills, self-billing and the management information given," according to Els van Herpen.
Due to the certainty that the Spanish products being auctioned will be available from ZON every day, multiple customers have chosen to no longer import those products themselves, but buy them from the ZON auction.
Els: "We also started with open ground products last season. I think we need an extra push for the third season when it comes to availability, as there wasn't enough regularity in the supply. Thankfully we were able to offer the greenhouse products every day, albeit not always in enough volume." According to Els the good prices realised are partially why the Spanish cooperations still supplied in weeks of limited availability.
After the summer ZON will plan another visit to Spain to make new agreements for the season 2017/2018. In the area of greenhouse vegetables ZON will do this with existing partners, whilst they are looking at new partners for the open ground vegetables.
Source: ZON Magazine
After the summer ZON will plan another visit to Spain to make new agreements for the season 2017/2018. In the area of greenhouse vegetables ZON will do this with existing partners, whilst they are looking at new partners for the open ground vegetables.
Source: ZON Magazine