Due to the extremely warm summer, the tomatoes in Spain have had a bad first sitting. "The Spanish tomatoes will be on the market a little later. Good quality tomatoes will arrive on the market around mid November," predicts Ger Kingma, responsible for the purchasing and sales of Spanish tomatoes within Hagé International. "The Spanish growers are carefully positive and the expectations are quite stable."
According to Ger, the Spanish tomato area is comparable to last year. "In contrast to other crops the professional tomato growers don't just switch to a different cultivation. There has been a divide between the professional growers with a stable business plan and programmed supply with other growers. You can no longer just put your plants down and see what happens. The supply of plum tomatoes will be a bit small this year."
Ger has high expectations for the beef tomato season
"Russia is once again not a destination, so a lot of tomatoes will be available for the Western European market," Ger expects. He doesn't expect more competition from Moroccan tomatoes than in other years. "Morocco isn't that important for the Western European market. It's much more focussed on the supply from Spain and the Canary Islands. Morocco does a lot via Perpignan and focusses more on the Eastern European market."
"Spain is trying to remain on the market for as long as possible as it is almost no longer possible to cover the turnover of six months cultivation with the price levels in recent years. There are sometimes tensions when the West European and Southern tomatoes are on one market, but in the end the customer decides which tomatoes to supply," concludes Ger. "I wish everyone a good tomato season. No one benefits from extremely cheap products."
For more information:
Ger Kingma
Hagé International
Tel: 0031 (0) 180-6577020031 (0) 180-657702
G.Kingma@thegreenery.com
www.hage-international.nl