The Greenery kicks off special top fruit year

Martijn and Sander Slabbekoorn

125 top fruit growers are connected to Coforta. The sales organisation markets around 110 million kilos of top fruit annually, which gives it a production share on the Dutch market of 18%. Most comes from own growers. In line with the national trend, the pear volume that The Greenery markets is now larger than the volume of apples.

Gerard van Loon

Decentralised division
Sourcing manager Fruit Gerard van Loon indicated that, in contrast to the soft fruit division, The Greenery is opting for a decentralised division with Leverancier Voorraad Locaties (Supplier Stock Locations/LVL's) in the areas that the fruit is grown in, where the link is made between growers and the packaging station. Besides Fruit Packing Zeeland, these include Kutschruiter (Flevo- en Noordoostpolder), Pronk (Noord-Holland), Van't Westende (Brabant), Van de Water (Midden-Nederland), Cafruso (Zeeland-Zuid-Holland), Van Wijk (Utrecht) and Rietveld (Bleiswijk). 

According to Gerard many of the LVLs have recently invested in a new sorting line to meet the stricter retail demands. "The advantage of there being large streams going past the packaging station is that we can also sort more beforehand. This removes some of the pressure from sales in putting the additional sortings on the market. Of course the supply to our retail customers is important, but we also need the trade to put the additional sortings in the market. In the end the total sales make the turnover."

A development that The Greenery is looking into at the moment is a cultivation optimisation system, which was developed by the TTC from the United Kingdom. With a camera system on a quad at Mts Slabbekoorn-DeBruijne as much information is collected about the fruit in the orchard on the volume of apples that can be expected and for instance the size and colouring. The system counts and measures the fruits on the tree and saves these figures on its computer. These figures are then linked to GPS coordinates so that a graphic map of the plot can be created, to be able to visual judge where the fruit is doing well or not so well. Figures can also be saved per plot for later viewing. The system will be used to make an easier and more accurate estimate of the harvest. "We will need a few more years to develop this through, but see it as a reliable tool of prediction for the future. Building up data is hugely important in this," says Gerard.

Challenging year
Anton Maris then spoke about the current top fruit season, about how the frost in the spring has caused a much lower apple harvest and slightly lower pear harvest. "In this area in particular many growers do not have access to fresh water to irrigate and this increases the drop out. We have a challenging year ahead of us. There will be a moment this year that the Dutch apples really run out."

Anton Maris

"For us long term customer relationships and continuity for our growers is the main goal. We source based on customer specifications and not based on speculations. We focus on sourcing on the Dutch market, but compliment it with import from southern Europe, South-America and New Zealand to offer our customers a complete top fruit package all year round. Around 70% of the volume is preprogrammed and the rest is for the free market. We see ourselves as a one-stop-shop for the full top fruit supply," concludes Anton.

Cees and Janneke Slabbekoorn

Spreading risk
Participants then took a look at the nearby fruit cultivation company belonging to the Slabbekoorn family, where Martijn is now the head as the representative of the fifth generation. Besides their 'home' location in Eversdijk where a considerable expansion was realised last year, the family now also has orchards in Kruiningen and Noord-Beveland. 

A lot of interest for tour

The area consists of 70 hectares, of which 51 hectares of new plantation. Martijn indicated he took the travelling distance as a blessing, due to the spread of the risk from hail and frost across the cultivation at 3 locations. This year a ULO storage of 1.7 million kilo was realised.

Co van Wiggen and Korne Barendregt

Martijn proved himself to be a well versed entrepreneur, who tries out a lot of innovation. The grower works with a three row spray based on GPS with a lawnmower under the sprayer, the employees harvest from a high rise picker, and he is testing RFID tags on the boxes this year.

Arjan de Jong, Ko Oostdijk and Gerard Pronk

"We want to be prepared for the future. Professionals are getting an increasing area to take care of, and automation for the future is crucial to this." Participants were able to see even more automation at Fruit Packing Zealand where, as well as two modern sorting and pre sorting lines sorting the fruit for size, colour and quality, they saw the robot place the crates on the correct pallet at the end of the sorting line.