Efficiency and shrewd investment are key to a sustainable business. The same can be said of any of the fresh produce sectors in many countries, but as the winter salad season approaches and plantings of Spanish crop earmarked for the UK marketplace get underway, this philosophy rings true more than ever for Spanish growers.
The main supply is from October to November onwards, when tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers from many different Spanish regions make up the majority of salads sold on the supermarket shelves, and have done for years. Looking ahead, this season is likely to be dogged by an uncharacteristically warm end to the summer, with average temperatures in Spain this August much higher than in 2009.
“The weather has been very normal in general, except the last week in August when we suffered very high temperatures,” says Jorge Brotóns, president of tomato grower and exporter Bonnysa, which produces tomatoes in Almería, Alicante, Murcia and Tenerife. “But fewer [tomato plants] have been planted and the crop will come later this year.”
Reports indicate that a slow, short start to the season across the salad category is likely, with a product-heavy finish on the cards. Iceberg is the main lettuce crop to come over to the UK from Spain and the category has been helped by supermarket price promotions keeping interest in the traditional product alive.
“Spain has no real competition for iceberg lettuce for the UK market and Spanish growers almost have that commodity all to themselves,” says Hernan Cortes of Spanish firm Cortes, a grower and importer of various salad products to the UK, including iceberg lettuce, of which it sends three lorries a week to the UK in the winter season.
Growers are planting iceberg lettuce now and Cortes is preparing to start sending them to the UK next month. He says that some salad products taking on a commodity status in the UK supermarkets makes a difference. “Icebergs are like round tomatoes,” he explains. “They are old traditional lines that make up the staple salad products. But now there are mixed leaves, Little Gem, so iceberg lettuce does have its competitors product-wise. Supermarkets just want to promote across the board - sometimes it can be a risky business, especially when they have to book adverts on the TV and in newspapers a month ahead, but the snap promotions work well when there is a glut on the market and it suits both parties.”
Brotóns agrees that the UK market puts pressure on the Spanish salads industry. “Bonnysa has been working with the UK for more than 50 years and so there have been a lot of changes through the years,” he says. “We used to sell a lot in the old times, but now we sell about 25 per cent of our winter volume to the UK. We are now more selective about who we sell to.”
At the start of its campaign, major Spanish fresh produce exporter UNICA Group is well aware of the challenges it faces and is tailoring its salad products to suit the UK marketplace. The group sends 15,000 tonnes of salad products to the UK a year and plans to increase this volume. “The pressure from supermarkets there is clear,” says the group. “However, we are developing products and brands that we hope will relieve this pressure on branded products or commodity items.”
Major grower group Hortyfruta’s salad production for the UK marketplace has stabilised and it generally sends 100,000t of salad products to the market a year. “Our members are constantly innovating and working to satisfy the end consumer,” says Maria Jose Pardo, managing director of the company. “We have a firm commitment to our farmers for sustainable agriculture based on biological control, to care for our products and to respect the environment and our workers.”
But with the whole industry hit by economic uncertainty, the lack of money in the business is probably the biggest challenge hitting the Spanish salad sector. For years, growers have been protesting, some louder than others, that the cost of production is continuing to go up while support for the industry, either via returns from customers or funding, continues to decline. From Cortes’ point of view, it is just a matter of waiting for some growers’ businesses to disintegrate.
“It is all coming to a head,” he states. “Soon there’ll be a period where certain growers - due to poor growing structures - will find it very difficult to continue in this business. Efficiency is becoming increasingly important and this is not the time to slip up when it comes to good quality structures, like covers and polytunnels and the like. They need big windows and ventilation, but some of the structures are around 20 to 30 years old and they’re just not good enough, especially with the erratic weather. If anything goes wrong, it won’t be the growers with the old structures that get product to market.”
What’s more, in a familiar tale across Europe, the banks in Spain aren’t lending growers money anymore. “It is a vicious circle; you get two to three bad years, with banks pulling out of the industry during a recession, and each company is trying to produce goods for a lower price than the next. You have to have a clear vision to forward and balance the risks.”
Brotóns believes this transformation is already starting to happen with tomato growers. “There will be a restructuring of the tomato industry in Spain,” he says. “The agronomic, commercial and financial difficulties in the past couple of years have forced a reduction in terms of extension growth.”
But even faced with a set of hurdles, it is clear that Spanish players are committed to the UK.
Andrew Zerpa-Falcon from Victoria Trading insists that the firm has maintained volumes to the UK though some tough trading conditions.
At the same time the team has focused on research and development, including alternative energy projects and plans that will take its annual production from 9m kwh to around 12m kwh, in order to make production more sustainable.
“From our side, we are planting a similar area of tomatoes to previous years, the majority of which is scheduled to commence production at normal times,” says Zerpa-Falcon. “We understand that perhaps this is not the case for some other growers in Spain and the Canaries and that the areas planted in the early production regions of Alicante and Murcia are lower and that some growers inAlmeria and the Canaries have planted later and less area.
“With reference to cucumbers, again we are planting a similar area to last year, giving us around 80 per cent of the Canary Island cucumber production, with the intention of guaranteed availability when the mainlandtraditionally has difficulties after Christmas.”
Many Spanish salad growers have taken matters into their own hands. Dissatisfied with their lot last season, they have set out to make a difference. Last November saw an abundance of salad crops on the marketplace, in particular tomatoes and peppers, and as a result unhealthy returns were received. This year, plantings have been considerably later in order to avoid a profit-damaging surplus in the early months of this season.
“Generally, the season has been very warm,” says Cortes, who grows round, on-the-vine and speciality tomatoes in Murcia for UK retailers and caterers. “The previous season was planted earlier and due to the volume around prices were poor. This season, tomato growers planted about 10 days later, which means that there won’t be a lot of volume in November or December as the later you plant, the longer it takes for the crop to grow.
“Anyone who did plant earlier has generally found that it has been too hot. There has been a good deal of flowering too early and we have lost part of the crop.
“At the end of the day though, the people who planted later did so in the hope of making more money.”
Cortes sees this as a return to the norm for industry, with the last couple of seasons starting too early for the region. “Planting 10 days late can mean as much as a six-week difference at the end of the season because it takes longer for the plants to mature,” he says. “There will be a little delay because of later planting and weather issues, but if anything that is going back to the true season.”
