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“Our challenge this season is to make an important move towards segmentation and end up working with seven or eight different articles in tomato with a lot of emphasis on those varieties with flavour”, comments Antonio Martín, the company’s Manager.
To this end, long-life tomatoes which used to represent 20% of the cooperative’s volume will be replaced by other specialities, with an especially big increase in vine tomatoes. This will be vine tomato that has only five or six pieces on the vine so better sizes, uniformity and colour can be obtained.
For the first time, cherry tomatoes and pear cherry tomatoes will be introduced and there will be an increase in cocktail varieties. “We have decided to remove long-life tomatoes because we cannot differentiate our product from the Moroccan equivalent and competition here is on price alone. With specialities and varieties that have more flavour we can gain value from the differentiation to make the business profitable and ensure our growers get their returns.”
There have also been significant steps taken in the direction of R&D and with the help of the company Savia (of which Casur is an associate) they are involved in various projects: adaptation and improvement of handling and processing machinery in order to obtain technology that responds to the needs of normalising vine tomato and, on the other hand, developing projects to improve varieties.
Eighty-five percent of the company’s total production is destined for export with the UK, German and Swedish markets being of particular importance.
Recently the company from Almeria has been awarded ISO 14.000 environmental certification.
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Antonio Martín