Esther Jiménez

The activities of this Sevillian company are focussed mainly on the transport of imported goods, both French edible potatoes as well as seed potatoes from the Netherlands and France depending on the time of year.

Esther Jiménez, Director of the company explains, “our biggest clients are the packing companies in Mercabarna because these are the first and last to receive and pack French potato”.

On the other hand, Transportes Vegetal coordinates and transports all of the goods for Anpasol, a company dedicated to the export of fresh edible potatoes.

Esther points out that potato is one of the least problematic vegetables to transport due to the nature of the product itself. However, there are other difficulties such as the meagre profit margin applied to the product which has a direct impact on the cost of transport. “This situation means we work a lot with drivers from the East of Europe, Poles or Czechs”.

One of the company’s current challenges is to broaden their clientele: “this year we are trying to enter the domestic market, especially in the Seville area for winter season clients as well as strengthening our position in Mercamadrid”.

As for any difficulties the company is facing, Jiménez affirms “these are not major difficulties, although it always depends a lot on the season of the year and the actual demand for lorries which affects whether transport is with refrigerated or simply covered lorries.”

The creation of Vegasol was very closely linked to the potato export of the Anpasol company. Jiménez comments that for a long time she was responsible for the company’s logistics. “One year I found myself in the position of not being able to find lorries to export the potatoes because there had been great demand from other fruit and vegetable growers and I had only close contact with the transport world for some months of the year. Because of this difficulty and in order to maintain contact with transport companies throughout the year, the idea of creating a transport agency specialised in the potato business came up.” Her in-depth knowledge of the potato sector explains why Jiménez, for the moment at least, rules out extending these transport services to other types of fruit and vegetable products.