Will Teeuwen, Teboza:

“Spanish cultivation of green asparagus is so good that we are looking at white asparagus and tips”

While participating in the Fruit Attraction, Teboza revealed the huge demand for European green asparagus. “This was one of our best fairs in history,” Will Teeuwen says enthusiastically. With its own Spanish crop, the asparagus producer, originally from Limburg, aims to serve a wide customer base, and in the meantime, tests with the cultivation of tips and white asparagus in Spain are also being started.

“A month ago, we started the first harvest of Spanish green asparagus. It is always difficult because the temperatures should not be too summery and the night temperatures should not be too high. These are the elements we have to navigate between. But fortunately, we managed to harvest good-quality asparagus. In hindsight, we could have started the season even earlier, because we see that we could have achieve the kilos and quality by then,” Will says.

Ken Heussen and Will Teeuwen of Teboza during Fruit Attraction

The cultivation in Spain is going so well that Teboza is currently orientating Spain to scale up cultivation by some 20-25 hectares for next year. “Then we will be at over 70 hectares in total. Now that may seem quite a lot, but if you distinguish spring cultivation, summer cultivation and autumn cultivation, the volume remains pretty manageable. Although we are out of the pilot phase, we cannot yet serve all customers at full throttle with this,” says Will.

Playing with the elements
“What we are mainly up against at the moment is that it is getting cooler and night temperatures are also going down. At the moment, it is raining quite a bit in our growing regions, making us ask ourselves whether we can continue harvesting for the last two or three weeks of the season or stop earlier. After all, we remain at the mercy of the weather gods. In theory, the planning is completely correct, but we are still playing with the elements.”

Teboza grows asparagus in Spain in Villamartin for regular and autumn crops and in the coastal region of Rota for early and summer crops. “We have had our own cultivation in Spain since 2013, but it did take a few years to find the right varieties and regions. Since 2018, we have started accelerating,” says the grower. The demand side is not the issue. “The demand for the green asparagus is good and is even higher than we can offer. Only last week we saw a brief dip, but that had to do with the strikes in America. Normally we see customers ordering very stable volumes weekly in the off-season,” Will says. “At the fair in Madrid, there was demand from all over Europe to start with Spanish green asparagus, but our focus at this stage is 100% on existing customers.”

Bringing Spanish cultivation forward
For now, Teboza is focusing entirely on green asparagus, but in the future, it plans to expand Spanish cultivation to include white asparagus and growing asparagus tips. “Next year, we will set up the first trials to see which varieties and cultivation systems are most suitable for growing white asparagus. Gas prices in the Netherlands and also the CO2 tax are increasingly making heated cultivation in the Netherlands impossible. We are therefore investigating how we can eventually bring forward cultivation in Spain, whether in greenhouse or outdoor cultivation.”

“Furthermore, we have started testing the thin, short asparagus tips on a reasonably large scale. For growers, this is never a very nice crop, as they prefer to grow thick asparagus, but we have found a way to increase the plant density tenfold. Next year we are going to see the first results of this,” Will concludes.

For more information:
Will Teeuwen
Teboza
Zandberg 14b
5988 NW Helden
Tel: +31 (0) 77 307 1444
w.teeuwen@teboza.nl
www.teboza.com