Of course, there is not currently any real winter weather in the Netherlands. But if we take a look at the trade channels, winter is in full swing and we mainly see imported products, writes Frits van der Meulen in his KCB column.
Despite the bad weather in Spain, most products such as aubergines, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers look very decent. The peppers that we see a lot in 'traffic light packaging' are of good quality. It is, however, important to keep stocks low because they can easily contain rotten fruit. The shelf life is nevertheless not very long.
These days tomatoes don't just come from Spain during the winter. In recent years we have also seen product from Morocco in the trade channel. We have nothing to complain about with regards to the quality of tomatoes from this region. Cucumbers and aubergines predominantly originate in Spain and the quality of these products is quite good.
The touch of Dutch product that we find consists mainly of tomatoes from the exposed cultivation and the quality is excellent. The same applies to the cucumbers. We hardly see this in the trade channel and the companies mainly "complain" about the lighter colour of the cucumber. In this dark period of the year we come across this lighter colour every year. It is a shame that we hardly encounter the Dutch cucumber in the supermarket. Retail has its fixed switchover time to the Dutch product.
Source: KCB