The company is moving forward with the new Ethnic Salads, the ‘poké’ style bowls and a 3 million euro investment in its factory
Primaflor follows the trends very closely to give consumers what they want: new surprising flavours and making it easier to eat fresh, healthy products. Accordingly, they are consolidating their processed range more and more, divided up into two lines: pre-prepared salads, with 18 million kg/year and delifood (bowls) with 20 million units per year. Between the two, they are already generating an invoicing of 60 million euros.
Led by the chef Rodrigo de la Calle, Michelin star and National Healthy Gastronomy Prize holder, with whom they have renewed their alliance, Primaflor has developed two mixes, full of flavour, texture and nutritional properties: their Ethnic Salads, which bring a touch of Asian and African exoticism through baby leaf of Red Pak-Choi in the first option and with Garlic Kale in the second one.
The company from Almeria is also extending its delifoods range, a segment where it is experiencing an important growth, with ‘Poké’ type options, prepared with their leafy produce and pulses (beans, chickpeas…). An option for a “complete, balanced meal, with all the nutrients that we need and that also fills you up,” Cecilio Peregrín, Corporate Director of Primaflor explains to Fruit Today.
But it doesn’t stop here, the growth of the range is accompanied by an important investment in the enlargement of its delifood processing installations and the purchase of machinery, to which it has devoted 3 million euros. If all goes according to plan, this will be ready in April 2020. Under this heading, we should also highlight the outlay of another 3 million euros for the extension of its peeled garlic factory.
The 2019/20 campaign
In spite of the cold drop that affected some of Primaflor’s crop land at the beginning of the campaign with floods, such as the Almansa intermediate staging area, and Almendricos, which suffered from a hail storm, the company is carrying on with business as usual in its programmes.
The export campaign was two weeks’ early compared to other years due to production problems at other sources, which meant an appreciable rise in prices on the free market. An incidental situation, but we should not yet cry victory as “the campaign is very long,” Peregrín points out.
In 2019 the total invoicing was just under 180 million euros and in 2020, it could go over 190 million. The company has 6,700 hectares of cropland, where fresh produce represents 65% of the sales and the remaining 35% is used for processed produce.
