The winter produce season is coming to an end, and spring vegetables are all gradually making their way onto the market. “We are closing the winter produce campaigns early. By the end of March, we will be out of carrots and other winter products. The 2022-2023 harvest was much less quantitative than the previous one,” explains Alexandre Picault, sales manager at Kultive.
Most of the range is already on the market
According to the professionals, this early end of the winter produce campaign means there is space on the market for spring and summer vegetables. “All the spring products are just now arriving on the market one after the other. In just a few weeks, we already started most of the range. We started a month ago with cucumbers. The eggplants are now also available, as well as the first volumes of peppers. As for cherry tomatoes, they will arrive this week, followed by the asparagus next week. Our asparagus come from the south of France, and we expect to harvest about 250 tons, three-quarters of which should be green. We will have 50 tons of white asparagus with purple tips, a southern specialty very popular among restaurant owners. And we have been offering our first button mushrooms for the past 2 to 3 weeks, which have been very well received by our clients.”
The volumes will grow rapidly
The products arrived with some delay of more or less ten days depending on the crop, but the volumes should grow quickly, thanks to favorable weather conditions. “The more daylight we will experience in the next few days means that we will quickly catch up with this delay in terms of volume. We will then return to our usual volumes for this time of year, and we will be able to offer a large quantity of good greenhouse products grown in a healthy way in accordance with our commitment to the Demain La Terre label.”
Producer prices back to levels that are accessible to consumers
The gradual increase in volumes will go hand in hand with a relative decrease in prices, which have been particularly high until now. “The lack of imported products, especially from Spain, has led to very high prices on the market. With the arrival of the French products, the supply has gradually increased, which means that prices are finally returning to levels that are psychologically acceptable to consumers.”
For example, we started the cucumber campaign with prices that were still higher than last year, but we are back to normal levels now. We have rebalanced the prices according to the reality of the market. Our goal is to make most of our French products accessible to all. But mass retailers must also do the same in order to make the products accessible to consumers. Today, the gap is still too big between producer prices and those displayed on the shelves. We hope that this will change soon so that we can launch the campaign and consumers can enjoy seasonal vegetables as soon as possible.”
For more information: 
Alexandre Picault
Kultive S.A.S.
190 allée du bois vert
45640 Sandillon, France
Tel.: 02 38 49 33 49
[email protected]
www.kultive.fr