“How many tonnes of mushrooms do you want?” smiles Geert Verdellen, director of Prime Champ, when I catch up with him. “I can organise 15 tonnes a day delivered direct as soon as I get back to the Netherlands, but it would only take me about eight weeks to get extra beds cropping, so I could soon double the figure.”
Like many Dutchmen who have built up enviable reputations for their business acumen by exporting to the UK, he comes directly to the point - but it is the sheer scale of his operation that is staggering.
“Prime Champ is not only the largest Dutch mushroom producer, but it also holds the title within Europe,” says Verdellen. “We have built our reputation on quality and service, and have a fully integrated company that has been built on close to 30 years’ experience, with a turnover of around £40 million.”
Verdellen says Prime Champ is ideally structured to meet the increasingly closer links that UK multiples, food manufacturers and wholesale markets require with their suppliers. “We control everything from phase one composting, right through to the growing cycle, and packing and logistical services, which circle around Horst on the southern Dutch-Belgian border, which is regarded as the centre of the Dutch mushroom industry,” he explains.
Prime Champ consists of 10 sites. Four of them carry out the key task of composting 2,000t at phase three a week and tray filling, servicing the needs of five separate farms, covering more than 80,000sqm of growing beds, and linked to the headquarters responsible for quality control, packaging, logistics and sales.
“Currently, we produce more than 500t of white mushrooms a week, and more than 35t of Chestnuts and Portabella, with an increasing volume of exotic mushrooms such as shitaki, oysters and enoki,” says Verdellen.
“But we have the additional bed area to respectively increase our main lines of white closed cup and button mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms, to more than 600t and 50t a week respectively.”
Verdellen sees the operation as far more than just a case of providing the right products. “To be successful, you must have complete control of the distribution chain, right up to delivery to your customer’s depot,” he adds.
Backing this has been an investment in an 18-strong fleet of 10-tonne cool chain lorries, which can cross the North Sea by ferry and be on the customer’s doorstep in the UK within 14 hours.
Prime Champ’s UK strategy is to target the widest spectrum of potential customers, from wholesalers and foodservice to multiples. It has already appointed a UK-based account manager, Andrew Grindle.
Grindle, who says Prime Champ has sufficient volume 52 weeks of the year to provide supply continuity, acknowledges that the UK market has the most sophisticated demands of anywhere in Europe. “But the UK also needs imports,” he says. “Latest statistics confirm that while national production stands at around 66,000t, the market is reliant on Ireland and continental sources to satisfy the annual consumption in fresh market terms of 114,000t.
“Add to this wholesale, foodservice and prepared product, and the figure is considerably higher.
“The sheer scale and logistics of ensuring a highly perishable product gets on the shelves in peak condition means everything has to be very professional,” he adds.
“Apart from traceability and environmental issues, forward planning, packing innovation and the constant mutual exchange of marketing information are now priorities. Everyone is seeking to maximise efficiencies when costs, particularly fuel and labour, are rising.”
Grindle continues: “What we have already found is that UK consumers are attracted primarily by appearance and quality when making a purchase. There is no season for mushrooms; they grow 52 weeks of the year in any country with the correct facilities. In fact, there are fewer food miles in bringing Dutch mushrooms to the UK than Irish.”
The other factor associated with commitment is the ability to have a flexible approach to meeting customer needs.
The UK mushroom industry has changed from all recognition from the time when there was first a surfeit of flats and then buttons, and little else.
Today, sales of chestnuts are booming, pushing up the volume needed by 20 per cent, and now accounting for five per cent of sales. There is an increase in the volumes of pre-packed whites, rising at a rate of seven per cent year on year. This is reflected by a similar decrease in sales of loose product.
Perhaps most significantly, Prime Champ is stressing one other important factor in its presentations to potential UK customers with whom it already has a foothold. “There will be decreasing availability of mushrooms,” predicts Verdellen. “This will be based on a combination of virus outbreaks, increasing demands from the processing industry, and actually fewer growers.”
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