The aubergine market has to deal with the necessary challenges this year. “Productions in the Netherlands were high. Volumes from Spain still frustrated. By now the majority of retailers have switched to Dutch aubergines, but there are still supermarkets that offer Spanish aubergines. In addition, we lost the Russian market, before the boycott one of the largest buyers of aubergines,” Patrick Schetsen of Purple Pride says.
“The first half of last year’s season was also particularly bad, but this was followed by a good second half. We will have to wait and see if this happens again this year. Germany and the UK are traditionally the largest markets. For several weeks now, demand from eastern Europe has been growing, but what we are missing is a week with many kilograms and a high price. The entire season we have remained between 40 and 75 cents, and that is really too little,” Schetsen says. “Fortunately there are very few problems qualitatively this year, although we have to remain alert because of the changing weather.”
“The sales of specialty aubergines is incomparable to that of the purple ones. There are much less day items, and the sales of special aubergines are through much more fixed programmes,” Schetsen explains. With a harvest of 20 million kilograms per year, divided over five cultivation locations, Purple Pride is the largest supplier of aubergines in northwestern Europe. The selling and marketing of aubergines from Purple Pride is done by DOOR Partners Ltd., the marketing subsidiary of Cooperation DOOR U.A.
