Domestic year-round production is a hot topic among many greenhouse growers, also in the UK. The fact that some British growers have installed supplemental lighting to create year-round production was not reflected in the current offer of greenhouse vegetables on the UK retail shelves this week. With the help of market intelligence data provided by ProduceView, we analyzed the current offerings.
At nine supermarkets, we analyzed the available products in the following categories; cucumbers, tomatoes and mixed peppers. Supermarkets visited were Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Morrisons, Co-op, M & S, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl.
From these nine supermarkets visited, only two had British greenhouse vegetables available in the examined categories; Tesco offered British grown Mixed Peppers, and Co-op had British tomatoes available.
Spain and the Netherlands are the major suppliers of greenhouse produce to the UK this week. Spain was responsible for the supply of all the cucumbers at the supermarkets, there were no Dutch or British cucumbers available.
Moroccan tomatoes could be found in Asda and Morrisons, while Dutch tomatoes were available in Lidl, Aldi and Waitrose. This is the first time this year that Waitrose changed from British to Dutch tomatoes. M&S had Spanish tomatoes available, also for the first time this season. M&S is normally loyal to the British tomato.
This article was made with the help of data prepared by ProduceView. For more information about their UK retail reports:
Market Intelligence Services Ltd
