"Selling pumpkin cubes to Austrian supermarket is a real milestone for us"

The pumpkin harvest is currently in full swing at organic De Terp Squashpackers in Erichem. "We are busy harvesting. We started in mid-August and will continue for another week or two," says Rinke Robbers. "We have had a good growing season with strong yields and high quality. The harvest is as much as 20% larger than in other years."

"In terms of the growing season, this is very much a virus year. We particularly see that the weaker varieties, which we also call kilo-catchers, are susceptible. We only sell top varieties. The challenge for us is to communicate this even better to our buyers, for example, by sending out weekly reports to raise awareness of quality. Unfortunately, we see that buyers are often not really interested in things like taste and starch content. In Germany, you sometimes even see half-green pumpkins with virus infestation on the shelves. That really shouldn't happen."

Currently, sales of the new crop are still sluggish. "That traditionally starts picking up again from October and November. The peak in sales is always in autumn and winter," says the grower. The majority, about 95% of our sales, come from the orange pumpkin, but specials like Spaghetti squash, Crown Prince, and Green pumpkin are also grown at De Terp Squashpackers. "At De Terp, we continue to fight hard for the orange (winter squash) pumpkin," he adds.

Several years ago, the pumpkin farm started supplying a new semi-finished red Hokkaido pumpkin year-round, both halves and cubes cut at 10 or 20 mm, produced in its own cutting kitchen.

A milestone followed this week with the first large order of pumpkin cubes to a major Austrian retailer. "In recent years, we mainly supplied semi-finished products. I am very proud that we have now found an end customer for our packaged end product made from the best quality pumpkins, cut at the source. This is a new line of business for us, and it was quite a challenge to generate turnover for our cutting kitchen," says Rinke.

Another challenge is optimising the harvest. "For the past two years, harvesting here has mainly been done by machine. We hardly have any staff left in the fields, except for the drivers of the tractors and machines," says Rinke. "That's a godsend, because there are fewer and fewer people willing to work in the fields. And we still bring in 6,000 tonnes of pumpkins in four weeks."

Overall, Rinke says the pumpkin market is very stable. "We are not in a commodity market, but work with a niche product. Prices are generally very stable, with supply and demand not influencing them as quickly as in other fresh produce products. Exports are mainly focused on the German market. Pumpkins are still relatively little consumed compared to other vegetables. At the same time, this offers huge opportunities to get more people in Europe to eat pumpkins."

For more information:
Rinke Robbers
De Terp Pompoenen
Lutterveld 2ª
4117 GV Erichem
Mob: +31 (0) 6 22324470
[email protected]
www.deterppompoenen.nl