Fresh is biggest competition
According to founder and owner Mark Aarts of Aarson Foods from Roermond, the competition with fresh has greatly increased in the Netherlands in recent years. The Netherlands not only boasts an enormous range of fresh fruit and vegetables compared to other countries, preserves also have a bad reputation. “Consumers are mainly pushed toward fresh because that makes the most money. Preserves are hidden in an aisle somewhere.” He laments the bad image preserves have. “Consumers want everything as fresh as possible, but you could ask questions about that. For instance, beans from Ethiopia have travelled a long time before reaching the store, while preserves or frozen beans are processed straight from the land. And I haven’t even mentioned food safety, which in my opinion is a lot higher in the preserves industry.” One segment where the industry saw significant losses is the fruit cocktails. Fruit salads are increasingly consumed fresh or semi-fresh. Although Mark believes preserved fruit wins out in terms of shelf life and quality, this also offers opportunities. He says semi-fresh is a particular growth market for Aarson Foods. “This could be semi-fresh asparagus in refrigeration in an attractive packaging with a fork. In future, we’ll head into that direction more.”
Changing consumption
Van der Kroon Food Products appears to suffer little from the increasing preference for fresh fruit and vegetables. This is mainly because the Kroon products and the fresh segment aren’t in each other’s way, according to Reinald Heijselaar. “Only the carrot and celery slices are getting a bit less each year. Perhaps these products are consumed fresh more often these days. There is some movement in the consumption of pickles. Years ago this was a declining trend, but it’s now slowly getting up to scratch again. The pickled onions and gherkins, our biggest products, are still our bestsellers.”
Prices gherkins up
That the market is under pressure, is also felt by Van der Kroon Food Products. Reinald says Russia has had a big impact on the trade in the preserves industry. “Russia always buys a lot of gherkins from Ukraine, but not anymore due to the boycott. They’re now buying a lot of gherkins in India. Due to the high demand and lower supply, the Indian gherkins became quite a bit more expensive. This results in price changes. Fortunately not as much as last year, but of course it does affect us.”
