Marketing one vegetable is not the other. The current Dutch season shows that too. While cucumber prices are high and pepper prices are reasonably good across the board, tomato growers still have some catching up to do in the coming weeks. Commercial director Ruud den Boer of Oxin Growers gives a market update.
Ruud den Boer
"For tomatoes, it's simply a difficult year, both in price on the day market and production. The contracts that were set up before the start of the season are at a good level. Now, with the sunny weather in recent weeks, we did catch up some of the production backlog, but we are still behind last year," Ruud says. "Last week, the price, especially of loose tomatoes, fortunately showed an increase. Those prices are now around 75-85 cents for A-tomatoes and 85-95 cents for B-tomatoes, but it has taken a long time to get there. The price of vine tomatoes is currently at an even lower level than loose tomatoes. Now all the productions in the tomato segment are past their peak, so that might still benefit pricing, but this will be rather short notice to compensate for the low prices earlier this season."
Whereas the season for tomatoes has been difficult, cucumber growers will not complain this year. "There have been some small dips, but overall the price level is at a high level," he said. On Friday, the 35-ers were still at a level around 85 cents. For the day-market growers, those are prices you can grow good cucumbers for. I can't quite put my finger on the high price level either, because productions are not excessively low and qualitatively the crops are also in pretty good shape."
"Last but not least, the supply of peppers came a bit later this season, with quite big differences between the growers. Especially at the beginning of the season, the supply was erratic, but the production backlog from the beginning of the season has now been made up reasonably well. Prices are at a reasonably good level. The price of red peppers occasionally lagged a bit behind, but overall, we can speak of a good pepper year so far," Ruud concludes.
For more information:
Ruud den Boer
Oxin Growers
+31 (0)180 203 203
[email protected]
www.oxin-growers.nl