This year, the calendar for Los Gallombares will have a special mark on it. The reason is that next September the company will officially open its new building. Premises covering 10,000 square metres, which are already up and running and that have meant an investment of 10 million euros. The cooperative’s 11 totally automated production lines allow the handling and preparation of 100,000 kg/day of asparagus, giving a logistical leap in line with its growth curve in recent years.
This building will also house the new offices, and the rest of the installations will be kept operative: warehouses for collection and handling of produce in Ventorros de San José, Montefrío, Láchar and Churriana de la Vega, as well as goods reception points in several places around the province of Granada.
Another of the cooperative’s important new developments is its investment in heated greenhouses to bring the production forward to the months of January and February. Following the German indoor crop method, Los Gallombares have built over a surface area of 3 hectares, with a system of underground piping that brings the temperature up using water boilers fed by biomass (olive stones).
This system, which has been on trial since last year, has allowed around 500 kilos of asparagus to be produced with the same quality and calibre as obtained in open air crops, the company’s Sales Manager, José Ángel Delgado, explains to Fruit Today.
Between the months of March and June, the company will market 8 million kilos of Spanish-grown asparagus on 2,000 hectares of cropland, mainly located in Granada and in the provinces of Malaga and Jaen.
The rest of the year they work with produce imported from Peru and Mexico in order to be able to serve clients 365 days a year, with volumes of nearly 3 million kilos.
In the near future, in just a few years’ time, they will take a new step in their business strategy with the start up of their ecological asparagus project. “At present, we have small volumes from some associates,” José Ángel Delgado comments.
