Irish fruit and vegetable supplier Donnelly Fresh Foods will be supplying Aldi with Irish pumpkins for the 5th year running. They will deliver around 82,000 pumpkins to the retailer this season. Aldi also stock 100% Irish white ‘ghost’ pumpkins all of which are supplied by Donnelly’s.
The company will also supply retailer Supervalue for the first time, as well as the wholesale markets. In total they will supply 200,000 pumpkins this season.
“Sizes are down a bit due to the hot weather and drought in August,” said Paul Hussey, Senior Trading Manager at the company. “The bigger varieties are strangely enough much bigger than normal though.”
Pumpkins are a labour-intensive crop and very seasonal, making it difficult to get the temporary workforce for harvesting.
“We have had to manage our resources very carefully and have pulled labour from other parts of business for the harvest as the seasonal labour is just not there anymore.”
Increasing costs are commonplace across the industry just now and this is no different at Donnelly’s, but according to Paul farm gate prices have increased this season.
“Everything from labour, to packing and transport has increased. Pricing was agreed back at the beginning of the year and so much has changed since then, but we have a very good open relationship with our customers which makes things easier.”
Paul Hussey
Donnelly Fruit & Veg
Tel: +353 1 8908100
Email: [email protected]
www.donnelly.ie
