In view of this year's positive results, Italian pepper production will be increased next year. Overall, Agrieuropa's summer vegetable campaign is going well, although the market trend for watermelons and mini-watermelons has been different. From September, Agrieuropa will also be marketing white courgettes with flowers, which are very popular on the Italian market.
"Peppers are a new experience for our company, both in terms of production and in terms of marketing. The harvest began in June and will continue until October. We are very satisfied with the development of this reference product, which has fair prices and a high demand, so we will try to increase the quantities produced next year." These are the words of Alberto Nocera, president of Agrieuropa, based in Terracina (Latina).
"We have also been harvesting green Cornetto peppers since June. This is a reference variety that was added to the range this year. In this case, we haven't had the same enthusiasm as for the sweet pepper," says Nocera. What is certain is that 80% of Cornetto pepper sales are destined for the French market, while only 20% are sold in Italy. Unfortunately, although France is the main market for this product, it prefers Moroccan products at lower prices. At the moment, Moroccan competition is being felt and sales are not increasing; on the contrary, in Italy, the market is not absorbing large quantities of this product, but there are continuous sales."
"In the case of dark courgettes, we have been able to pursue the objective we set ourselves in recent years, which was to produce this reference product for 12 months. We have to admit that there are difficulties in the summer with open field production, which is more exposed to virosis, with lower yields than in the spring and with prices that are not very attractive, but it is possible to maintain workloads and customer service. In addition, for this year's cucumber campaign we have doubled the number of transplants, but we are not very satisfied with this reference because although sales are continuous, prices are not as expected."
Alberto concludes by looking at the performance of the watermelon campaign, which is the core business of the summer campaign for Agrieuropa. "In terms of sales volumes, we are almost satisfied because our customer base allowed us to sell all our product at times when the end consumer did not have a preference for watermelon due to the low temperatures experienced in most of Europe. It was not so easy to think about selling all the product we had at times like June and July when our main concern was volume. However, since the end of June, the areas cultivated in Europe have multiplied and sales have not been what they should have been, and we have suffered greatly from prices that have fallen week by week. At current prices and yields, we are barely able to cover our costs of production. And although a large part of our production has been sold in a way that we would not have liked, we are confident that from this week there will be an increase in demand and we will have feedback from all our customers, also in terms of price."
"As for the mini watermelon, recently introduced in our range, we never managed to break the game; it's a season to forget, both for the prices obtained and for the demand, which was never equal to our production; the main reasons are the bad weather and the strong competition from our Spanish colleagues, who always beat us with low prices."
For more information:
Agrieuropa Soc. Coop. Agr.
S.S. 148 Pontina Km 97,700
04019 Terracina (LT) - Italy
Tel.: +39 0773 756158
Tel.: +39 0773 756408
Email: [email protected]
www.agrieuropa.it