Normally this period can be slightly tame in the mushroom business, but at the moment the demand is reasonably good. "The demand is quite constant this season. The supply is a bit lower than we're used to and this is causing a healthy market situation," says Arno van den Oord of mushroom and bean sprout wholesaler Champoord from Ammerzoden.
"The price of the white mushrooms is at around 1.50-1.60 Euro. The brown ones are lagging behind a little and the special varieties are reasonably on par. The United Kingdom isn't demanding that much yet, but we certainly can't complain about the sales to the Benelux," says Arno. Champoord exports throughout Europe, but also sees enough growing potential for the export of Dutch mushrooms outside of this.
"We're hoping the market will remain stable. We're certainly positive. It has been worse at this time of year with the competition from a lot of other products and the quality of the mushrooms is reasonable to good," says Arno. "The sales of bean sprouts is going well and has bounced back. We see good possibilities for bean sprouts and want to extend that production in the future."