Red cabbage is currently not readily available, and prices reflect this. “It’s a good time to make purple oxheart cabbage part of your assortment,” says Coen Swager of TB&S. The company has grown oxheart cabbage for 35 years, and in recent years they also started growing purple oxheart cabbage. They market this under the Violetti name.
Purple oxheart cabbage isn’t just an appealing alternative to red cabbage price-wise. “Violetti has a softer flavour and is a very versatile product. Besides, it has the rich colour of the classic red cabbage, but that actually means Violetti represents the best of both worlds. To make consumers more familiar with this new vegetable we market it under brand name Violetti in cooperation with Hazera, which developed the purple oxheart cabbage. There’s also a website where consumers can find information, recipes and background information regarding the Violetti.”
Purple oxheart cabbage is much ‘greener’ as of 2019 as well. TB&S had 4,008 solar panels installed on the roof of their building in Saint Pancras, ensuring the company can now operate CO2-neutrally. Combined, the solar panels generate 1.1 mW of capacity. “It’s all for our own use,” Coen explains.
The megawatts are mostly used for cooling. TB&S supplies conventional purple and organic oxheart cabbage year-round. “To bridge the Dutch winter, we produce in our fields in Portugal from September to April. To be able to supply from the Netherlands as long as possible, we store the final part of the Dutch harvest just before winter. The oxheart cabbage is placed in a special cooling chamber with a storage capacity for as much as five million kilos of vegetables. By extracting oxygen from the air, the oxheart cabbage enters into a so-called ‘hibernation,’ this is also called ULO storage: Ultra Low Oxygen storage. Oxheart cabbage remains fresh and flavourful for a long time in hibernation,” Coen concludes.
