Spanish salad producers have, quite literally, weathered the storm and the indications are that the sector is set for a resurgent 2004-05 season.
“We have great hopes this year,” says José Luis Garcia, of the Almeria-based Grupo Primaflor SA, summing up the confident mood of growers.
“We suffered from weather problems in each of the last two years, with heavy rain followed by long periods of drought.
“We have been suffering extreme temperatures again recently,” notes Garcia, whose company’s salad output includes tomatoes, lettuce and radishes. But the weather forecast is that the water supply is about to start and it certainly looks like being a good first quarter for us.”
Early supplies from Spain could take advantage of the shortfall in English produce, which was hit by the recent inclement weather.
Iceberg growers were particularly affected only a few weeks ago, when the unusually wet conditions caused harvesting difficulties and problems with quality.
Steve Cornwell, director of ScSMB Produce and head of the growers group Spania Fresh, says: “Because of the poor weather conditions in England, home-grown produce will fade quicker and we’ll be into a Class Two situation.
“So we are looking with interest at the start of the Spanish season. It’s been a struggle with prices for the last two years, but this year, Spanish produce should benefit from coming into a market suffering on quality.”
While the quality issue could indeed benefit Spanish imports it might also be something of a double-edged sword, warns Paul Beynon of Langmead Farms, whose sister companies include the Murcia-based Langmead España SL.
Sounding a note of caution, Beynon says: “If demand is high during the Spanish changeover that will be fine, but there’s going to be more English produce left so in the early weeks of the season there’s going to be a doubling up of Spanish and very average English produce.
“That could drive prices down, so at the moment I’m not totally positive about the start of the Spanish season.”
Beynon, whose company produces a wide range of salads plus Baby Leaf and spinach, predicts that the Spanish season will start earlier this year than last.
“I expect to see our supplies starting to come in on October 11,” he says, “whereas last year it was a week later.
“Some of the product will go on the wholesale markets, but some will go on supermarket shelves and by October 25 they should be fully on Spanish.
“It could be a difficult year though, with the pressure on the retail supply base. With Morrisons having taken over Safeway and the intense competition with other supermarkets, the UK market is extremely price conscious.”
Price-consciousness is of course a long-accepted part of the supermarket scene, as Primaflor’s Garcia admits. “The pricing issue is always at the top of your mind,” he says.
“The UK market not only looks for a good average price but also a good average quality. The standards of quality are high but we aim to meet them because the UK is a key market for us.”
While the major retail players will continue to demand the highest possible quality at the lowest possible price, they appear to be progressively taking a more empathetic and proactive stance in salad supply.
And that has helped Spanish growers consolidate and streamline their operations, reckons Cornwell, whose ScSMB organisation specialises in the production and distribution of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.
“With the feedback we get from our customers,” explains Cornwell, “we can help growers decide exactly what are the best lines for them to produce.
“There’s a lot more closer working with supermarkets these days. It’s not the old-fashioned ‘what have you got?’ anymore, it’s questions like ‘what varietal tastes can you offer?’, ‘what’s got added value?’, ‘what about resistance to viruses?’.
“So there’s far more co-operation between supermarkets, distributors, growers and seedhouses and that’s helping the grower to crop better and to sell better crops.
“Growers have been consolidating their businesses and spreading their risks out more. In all the salad sectors there’s been consolidation to give more control over what’s put on the market and therefore to give themselves a better business.
“There’s also the competition from other countries like Greece, Turkey and Israel to consider, so quality is always a major factor along with production figures and price.
“It’s not easy, but we have to give growers incentives for the future - we’ve got to have a change from the doom and gloom of the past five years.”
The ‘doom and gloom’ to which Cornwell refers has mainly been weather-induced, and according to some experts the seemingly on-going change in weather patterns casts a significant cloud on the horizon of Spanish salad production.
Peter Davis of Davis (Louth) Ltd, whose Spanish produce is grown in the Valencia and Murcia regions, sees a potentially bleak future and is already making contingent plans to possibly reduce the high percentage of product which they ship from Spain.
“The change in weather patterns became evident 10 to 12 years ago,” says Davis, “and the pace of change seems to be quickening every year.
“The Gulf Stream is slipping south and one of the results is that southern Spain is not getting the warm, sunny winter days it used to have. There’s more cloud, which means less light, and light is of course essential to salad production.
“We first felt the affects of all this in France. Ten years ago 90 per cent of our overseas salad production was French and 10 per cent Spanish, but after two very difficult years with France, due to weather such as freak frosts, we began to change our emphasis.
“Now 80 per cent of our product comes from Spain and only 20 per cent from France - but because of the continuing change in weather patterns we are now considering producing 20 per cent of our output in Israel.
“We’ve already been out there and we’ll be going again to study the possibilities - we would produce out there initially as a buffer for any shortfall from Spain, but we do feel that this sort of insurance may become necessary.”
Despite painting what some might feel is a doomsday picture for Spanish salads, Davis is next year aiming to open a new office in Adra, near Almeria, to complement his company’s Valencia base.
Meanwhile in Navarra, northern Spain, Davis (Louth) is trialling protected production of a variety of salads, including Iceberg.
So, weather or not, the company is not about to forsake Spain. “We are just trying to be one step ahead of nature,” says Davis.
“We are looking seriously at the Navarra project and may buy land there if the trials continue to go well. They didn’t have the cold weather they usually have this winter, whereas in southern Spain they had their third bad winter in a row.
“I couldn’t believe it when I got a call from our Valencia office one day to tell me it was snowing over there!
“Opening a new office in Adra, where we are at present awaiting planning permission, will save the long drive from our Valencia office and more crucially will really help us in terms of quality control checks, traceability and due diligence.
“Through pre-financing our growers we can control where seed, chemicals and equipment are purchased to meet the criteria of our customers, and having our own growers certainly enables us to control our market.”
Davis (Louth), like many companies not just in Spanish salads but throughout the fresh produce industry, are moving further into speciality lines - a development driven largely by the UK market.
Langmead España, for instance, was established in 1998 and grew 20 hectares of Baby Leaf Salads - now the company produces 360 hectares of Baby Leaf salads, Iceberg, Romaine and organic salads.
Paul Beynon says: “People’s tastes are changing and, for example, there’s been a massive growth year on year in the sales of Romaine products.
“We launched a couple of new products with Tesco, a value lettuce line and at the top end ‘Tesco’s finest Red Romaine,’ and we were very pleased with first year sales.”
ScSMB have successfully gone down a similar route, to the extent that Steve Cornwell says: “Tomatoes are not just one line now, there are 10 to 12 different varieties and growers are looking at them as different commodities with different pricing structures.
“It’s another example of spreading out risk and I feel that this is important for the future of salad producers.”
If Spain’s response to the continually growing demand for speciality types such as baby, plum and on-the-vine tomatoes is an indicator, then the future for Spanish salad growers could be brighter than many in recent times have feared.
