Unica Group has managed to market 120 million kilos of products since the start of the 2018/19 campaign on September 1 up until December 31, which entails an increase of 30.7% compared to the same period of the previous year.
It has been reported in a statement that all the cooperatives integrated in Unica Group have grown considerably since joining the second grade cooperative.
Specifically, the cooperatives that were already integrated have recorded a 13% growth, while the other 17% corresponds to the recently joined ParqueNat (Almería) and Virgen del Rocío (Cádiz).
Also noteworthy is the notable increase in the production of organic crops.
As for the protests and the withdrawal of cucumbers from the market that have marked the situation of the sector in recent weeks, the president of Unica Group, José Martínez Portero, has reiterated his call to unity.
"It's not been an easy year, but the important thing is to stand together in order to sell better and minimize the risks. If we had stayed together from the start, the problems currently suffered by cucumber producers would not have been as severe," he said.
For the president of Unica, acting in an individualistic way "harms the interests of a whole sector, and some take advantage and sell cheap, while others are throwing their products away."
He considers that the lack of planning has been a key factor to explain this crisis, together with short-term problems, such as the weather and the recent protests in France.
In this sense, he said that "if the sector stood together and organized itself in cooperative models, there would be better planning. External factors would affect us to a lesser extent and we would have a greater capacity to react to them."
