"A very average greenhouse vegetable year for now"

"It has been a very average year for greenhouse vegetables so far. As usual there are products that do better or worse, but across the line there are few extremes," says director Hans van Luijk of growers union Van Nature. "We have quite high productions. There are some signals that there will be more demand from southern Europe and I don't expect markets to drop out completely."

"The prices of the vine tomatoes are mediocre. Until now the situation wasn't that bad, but it can't last too long. The productions are all high. Vine cherry tomatoes had a difficult start, but those sales are now going better and the sales of loose tomatoes is also reasonable, although they do demand a specific customer group," says Hans.

The sales of the cucumbers is going reasonably well. Last year we had very good weeks in cucumbers in the summer and we wonder whether we will equal them, but sales are going quite well at the moment. The supply from southern Europe is reducing and the Dutch productions are also declining due to the cultivation shifts," says Hans.

"We have also had a reasonably positive season for aubergines so far. The situation was the same for peppers for a long time, but now - yellow in particular - they have declined strongly. Spain had its own production for a long time, hopefully they will start to demand our peppers now. There was a positive response to the first test shipments to China. Now the regular orders will take place, to there are exciting times ahead for our China project," concludes Hans.

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