"We began the first harvest in the spring of 1994, on an area of just 3 hectares. Now, we count about 70 hectares, together with our 16 associated producers, and this year we have further increased our plantings by 10% compared to last season," said Francesco Nicodemo, coordinator of the sales office at the Italian company Nicofruit.
Strawberries of the Inspire variety (photo from 22 December 2021)
"Our main variety is Inspire, of which we have 4.5 million plants this year. The now firmly established Sabrosa-Candonga variety is growing and producing in an area of about 20 hectares, equivalent to 1.3 million seedlings. Nicofruit does not work with early varieties, so the first picking will take place around 20 January."
Part of the Nicofruit team
"Both Italian and foreign supermarket chains remain our main sales channel. We have almost finished preparing the 2022 program and it includes promotional campaigns throughout the season. Last year, we launched Fragola Matera, our brand that succeeded in a few months bringing consumers a tasty strawberry grown with care for the environment. This year, we want to highlight our brand even more."
Nicofruit's site
"We are ready for the new strawberry season and we have some innovations in terms of processing. The first selection takes place during the harvesting, but after that, we carry out a detailed inspection on quality and we also sort by weight. For this, we have modernized our two processing and packaging lines with new software. Now we can carry out a test down to the smallest detail so that the baskets leaving our packaging plant in Scanzano Jonico for the various destination markets contain only the best strawberries."
Excellent flowering of the Inspire variety
"On the whole, the plants are doing very well. Depending on the time of transplanting, some strawberry plants are already flowering, while others will do so by the end of January. We will certainly face some challenges again this year, but we still hope to replicate what we achieved last season, one of the best in recent years, in terms of cultivation and sales. We are ready for a new adventure and we think we can market strawberries until the end of June."
For more information:
Frutthera Soc. Coop. Agr.
Via Provinciale, 15
75020 Scanzano Jonico, MT
(+39) 0835 954666
info@frutthera.it
nicofruit.it