“Seedless bell peppers and residue-free farming on the rise in Spanish horticulture”

Dutchman Stephan van Marrewijk has been working for the commercial department of cooperative Vicasol, which represents about 900 members with a combined area of approximately 1,800 hectares of greenhouse vegetables, for ten years. Vicasol has four packing warehouses, and this year they’re working on expanding with a new packing shed and a trial greenhouse with a total area of 12 hectares. 

“Because planting occurred later, the season has starting a bit slower. This is better for the product, because it wasn’t planted in the summer heat, although temperatures have been high up till now,” Stephan says.

Differences remained limited among the areas of various vegetables in Spain, according to him. “We have fewer vine tomatoes and some more bell peppers and aubergines. An important development of recent years is the increasing demand for organic vegetables, which is highly anticipated, because the organic area is growing every day. Besides, most competition will come from Morocco this year as well.”

A different segment of Vicasol consists of gazpacho salmorejo, fresh tomato additives and roasted bell peppers. “With these, we try to produce as sustainably as possible, and all of our class three vegetables that can’t be sold as fresh are processed as much as possible,” Stephan says. The domestic (Spanish) market is good, but export of these products is quite difficult, because consumers outside of Spain don’t know most of these products. “It’s a complex market with a great number of suppliers.”

The majority of Vicasol’s customers (85 per cent) consists of retailers throughout Europe. The cooperative has no lack of interested growers. “Horticulturalists are lining up to join us,” Stephan says. Trend in Spanish horticulture is that more and more is grown production-wise preventively. “With our state-of-the-art laboratory, we can test all of our members and help find alternatives to remain, and even grow, below one-third of MRL standards. Seedless bell pepper varieties are also on the rise.”