Irish tomato business faces delayed start to 2023 growing season

David Currid of Grantstown Nurseries in Ballygunner on the outskirts of Waterford City. Mr Currid purchases his plants from Dutch company, Plantise, which is winding down its operations. Picture: Dan Linehan

An Irish tomato grower faces a delayed start to his 2023 season following the announcement that the Dutch plant raiser he works with is winding down business.

Grantstown Nurseries, based in Ballygunner outside Waterford City, grows around 250 tonnes annually of eight different tomato varieties in one hectare of modern glasshouses.

All the produce is supplied for the Irish market, David Currid who runs the business said, and while it’s a relatively small sector in this country, it’s “a very sustainable model of growing”.

Mr Currid described the challenges the business has faced and continues to face with extreme rises in input costs, particularly energy, and now, he and other Irish growers are left scrambling to find a plant propagator just weeks out from the beginning of the next growing season.

David Currid said that the seed is sown in the Netherlands in mid-November, then those plants would arrive in Ireland in early January. Picture: Dan Linehan

In January each year, Grantstown Nurseries has its plants delivered from the Netherlands when they are about 1ft tall, having been raised by a company called Plantise.

“Propagation is a specialist job because the plants, they have to raise them in very strict, hygiene protocols for disease and pest management and all that,” Mr Currid explained.

“The seed is sown in Holland in mid-November, then those plants would arrive to us in early January, they arrive in the back of a truck and we have our crop then in situ the following day in the glasshouses, plants all spaced out about 50cm apart.

“Tomatoes are a single-season crop, it’s an annual plant so it has to be replaced every year.”

A nervous time of year

Grantstown Nurseries has been dealing with Plantise for over 20 years, and “they’ve always produced a very good plant”.

“There are so many things that can go wrong at that time of the year with bad weather at sea and ferries being delayed and that but we’ve always had our plants here give or take in a few hours, you don’t want them getting too cold or too warm in the back of a truck, so it’s always a nervous time of the year,” he said.

“You’ve paid so much for these plants that your whole season depends on this delivery being successful.”

It was reported last week that Plantise is closing down next spring due to the cost of inputs.

For Mr Currid and other Irish growers who relied on Plantise, its comparison is “like the ESB going out of business and you’re in the business of electricity, they’re that important to growers in Western Europe”, he said.

“There’s a number of plant raisers in Holland — they’re very specialised, highly-mechanised producers of plants.

“They would produce the likes of tomatoes and cucumbers at this time of the year for plants in January and then once that’s done, they would move on to maybe bedding plants or pot plants for later,” Mr Currid added.

Mr Currid said that last season, there was a price increase for purchasing plants from the Plantise, “which was acceptable enough”, and a further increase was expected for the next growing season.

While that was “difficult enough to swallow, we more or less said we’re going to have to go with that”, he said.

'We have nobody to raise our plants for 2023'

However, Mr Currid found out last week that Plantise was being wound down, and that orders that had already been placed with them for the 2023 growing season would be honoured, but they would not take new orders.

“An awful lot of growers would give an indication of what they would need, but they wouldn’t place a firm order until probably mid to late October for the following season,” Mr Currid explained.

“As it stands now, we have no order, we have nobody to raise our plants for 2023.”

Until Grantstown Nurseries has an order booked with an alternative supplier, "everything is up in the air". Picture: Dan Linehan

Mr Currid estimates that probably 70% of the growers in his sector in Ireland are affected by this, with the remaining 30% already getting their plants from a different company, “who is obviously under severe pressure now”.

“They’re going to try and pick up the slack but unfortunately, the window that we require the plants in is so small that it means that in all likelihood, our planting dates will be delayed for season 2023 as we try to source an alternative supplier.

“Plantise would deal a lot in export from Holland, many of the other remaining plant propagators, most of their business would be for Dutch growers so they’re at capacity.

“We’re ringing around at the minute to try and see is there anybody with spare capacity that could facilitate Irish growers.”

The best case scenario, Mr Currid said, is that the crop “will be delayed by a couple of weeks”.

“Worst-case scenario, it could be delayed by a month to six weeks,” he said.

“Until we have an order booked with an alternative supplier, everything is up in the air.”

Energy costs

In addition, the business itself has to contend with increased input costs.

“Energy has been our biggest cost and to the end of September, our cost is up 360% on 2020, and it’s up about 90% on last year,” Mr Currid said.

“2020 would have been a semi-typical year, where we would expect to spend about €100,000 per hectare on heating, last year that went up to about €220,000, and this year we’re already at €315,000, and we still have October to November to navigate.

“We’ve been fortunate that our customers have given us a price increase of around 12% to 15% and that has offset some of the cost, and Government introduced an aid scheme this year for horticulture of which glasshouse growers got the bulk of the aid available.

“2022, weather-wise, has been a reasonably good year, and crop production has been above average; so that has helped.

“People are hedging their bets at the minute waiting to see what time they would really like to plant a crop at because obviously, the energy prices are going to be particularly high through the winter period.”

There are only eight commercial tomato growers in Ireland. Picture: Dan Linehan

There are only eight commercial tomato growers in Ireland, with a total estimated area of about 12 hectares of tomatoes grown, Mr Currid explains.

“While we are small, the level of expertise growing-wise and experience in the country is on par with what you’d see across Europe,” Mr Currid added.

Irish customers

Plantise has been one of the top three cultivation companies in the Netherlands. 

The company's chief executive Marco Vermeulen confirmed to the Irish Examiner that the last of its plants will be delivered in March 2023.

Mr Vermeulen said that signed orders made before October 1 this year for plants to be delivered in January will be honoured, but that no orders after this date are being taken.

Plantise has a total of seven Irish customers.