Organic grower Quality Life Produce has shut down cultivation in Sexbierum. The grower has about 30 hectares of greenhouse in Friesland. No new cultivation activities are planned for next year, reports Omrop Fryslân, based on a message from the company to its employees.
In the Leeuwarder Courant, manager Meinte Meinsma recently indicated that the company is having a hard time due to increased energy prices. Bankruptcy would not be an issue, the newspaper wrote at the time, but a temporary halt or starting cultivation later were real options.
That temporary stop has now been announced to employees. Temporary contracts will not be renewed after November, Omrop Fryslân writes. Permanent contracts will remain for the time being. It is unclear when the company will resume production.
This spring, in the April issue of trade magazine Primeur, Maud Valstar, commercial manager of Bioworld, also indicated at the time that part of the production, as of 2022, centralized in Friesland and no longer at several locations, was stopped. QLP is the cultivation branch of the trading company Bioworld. Bakker Barendrecht is an important customer of QLP. Valstar pointed out that production costs for organic cultivation are more than 30 percent higher, and the production per m2 is also somewhat lower than conventional cultivation.