Four experienced Dutch greenhouse tomato and cucumber growers are merging their businesses to ensure that they remain competitive over the next ten years.
The four companies (and three families) are Greenway, Greenvalley, Van der Voort, and Kwekerij van den Berg, and together they operate a total production area of 50 hectares spread across seven sites in the regions of De Lier, Vierpolders, and ‘s-Gravenzande. The new entity will be known as The Valley, and will be run by a board comprising Jack Groenewegen, Joost and Thom van der Voort, and Marcel van den Berg.
“This summer, we already knew we were going to merge,” Jack Groenewegen told Hortidaily. “We have been working on this process for about a year and accelerated to complete it before Christmas. We thought that was a good time.
“We have known each other for almost 30 years, actually since 1993, the beginning of [Telersvereniging] Prominent. Our businesses and mutual visions complement each other well and are fertile ground for the future.”
The new company may also expand the product range into new crops, beyond the current tomatoes and cucumbers, and the growers have been working to coordinate cropping and variety choice for a couple of years now, including introducing cucumbers to the traditional tomato nurseries.
In a statement, the company said that it wanted to keep production in its current locations “as much as possible” adding that “we are going to try to help each other and make improvements at each other.” The new company will see administration and management functions brought together in one central location.
