The UK supply chain stands to benefit from a new link up between Spanish and Dutch salad co-operatives to provide a smooth transition at the changeover in seasons.

Almeria-based Unica Group and Venlo’s Zon co-operative have announced they are working on collaborating more closely together.

“We have been investigating the possibility of working together commercially for about six or eight months,” Unica Group general manager Enrique de los Rios told freshinfo. “We are two co-operatives with a very similar mission, products and some customers in common. We recently met together and we are looking at collaborating. The UK is a very strategic market for us at Unica and we want to offer the possibility of a supplier acting in a co-ordinated manner, especially at season’s overlap between Spain and the Netherlands in the spring and again in the autumn.”

Both co-operatives are major grower-suppliers of on-the-vine tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers as well as having smaller volume production of other protected crops such as aubergines and courgettes.

_“Working together means we can help our customers to become more competitive, and also we can improve the added value for our growers,” said de los Rios. Unica has some 900 growers and sales of some €139 million while Zon groups 400 growers who between them have sales worth €261m.

“We think that this Dutch-Spanish cooperation can make it possible to offer a more complete range of products to customers in the fruit and vegetable market,” said Frans Van Dijck, managing director of Zon.

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