Henk Marinus Elfferich was born in Loosduinen as the son of a grower producing cucumbers and carrots.
He grew up in a protestant family and study was not really his thing, unlike his younger and gifted brother. After school he spent one year selling chocolate at his mother’s family company De Heer, but the bars were too small. At auction in Loosduinen he joined Arie Schoemaker in 1954, where he learned the profession and where he noticed that the ‘gentlemen exporters’ at that time earned their money well. Undoubtedly he thought ‘I can do that better’, and in 1960 he started his own company.
The UK and Ireland were his favorite countries, although he once even saw opportunities in selling lapwing eggs to Germany, where his wife Heidi comes from. After a cup of coffee atAbraham Troost's family home and seeing it all first hand, he knew it for certain: in England you can make money. Robert Steveney in Covent Garden was his firstcontact and many more followed. James McKenzie & Sons in Glasgow have been faithful to him for life, while LV Ward (Farm Produce) was a partner for decades. From Rien Ark he learned the bold boundaries of our trade and gained important Irish contacts such as Neil McCann of Fruit Importers of Ireland.
You could count on Henk: as a customer, a supplier, but also as a human being. But you were either his ‘mate’ or you weren't. In the quiet winters when there were no greenhouse products, the Westland merchants went into the fields. Carrots, leeks, cabbage, onions, potatoes and fruit: the farmers were visited and produce was bought from the field. You saw and spoke to each other, drunk a cup of coffee and went looking for a phone somewhere to pass on some details - the customer heard his price, and the transporter organised the transport. Everything was packed and loaded by hand and days later the produce arrived at its destination. Henk had all the prices and numbers in his head or on a small note. His administration never did get much bigger.
Crop predictions always kept him busy. The rain in England, the cold spring in the Westland, the winters in the north: it always remained a part of his life and in his heyday it was a unique gift. He had an exceptional feel for the supply side. After the closure of Loosduinen and a couple of years in Kwintsheul, Henk settled after the merger in 1976 at the Westland Noord auction (now ABC Westland) in Poeldijk.
He grew into a phenomenon and became the number-two Dutch exporter to England in the 1980s, handling tens of thousands of tomato boxes, cartons of lettuce or trucks with cabbage. He kept buying some days, using the auction's cold stores, in order to ship it all when the price was a bit higher. The auction board ran away with him, but a statue never came.
Henk was a neatly dressed man, always correct, never cursed, lived generously and remained calm and polite at all times. He had a sense of humor that we became familiar with: 'Get a some staples for the tomatoes”, he would say, or the telephone handset was rubbed with lubricant and quickly afterwards ‘the victim’ was called.
With Henk’s death our sector has lost an icon who has made a major contribution to the Dutch export trade and to the income of many growers. He was a major example for all of us.
Henk M. Elfferich was great.
Additional thanks to Jan Flikweert, Piet Vijverberg, Herman Troost, Dolf Reigersberg and Peter Schoemaker for their contributions to this article
