Tag Archives: cucumbers

Tesco adds cucumbers to imperfect veg range

Tesco has said that it will add new lines, including cucumbers and courgettes to its Perfectly Imperfect range of ‘wonky’ fruit and vegetables.

The cucumbers are priced at 35p per 100g and will form part of the Perfectly Imperfect range, which already includes parsnips, potatoes and strawberries. Sales of the range have grown tenfold since it was launched, with apples and parsnips showing particular growth.

Matt Simister, Commercial Director for Fresh Food and Commodities at Tesco commented, “Providing great quality produce at low prices is clearly something our customers find really helpful, and we’re expecting our new Perfectly Imperfect cucumbers to prove just as popular as the rest of the range. We want to do everything we can to cut food waste, and we’ll continue to do more to help our suppliers and customers reduce the amount of food that is wasted from farm to fork.”

Photo Credit: Tesco

The post Tesco adds cucumbers to imperfect veg range appeared first on Hort News on 22 June 2016.

Cucumber growers struggling

Reports that the UK cucumber sector is at the ‘brink of extinction’ may be melodramatic, but industry representatives agree that further contraction will be seen if the market does not pick up.

Cucumbers were one crop highlighted as being particularly at threat in the NFU’s recent Catalyst Revisited report after UK production fell below 100 ha for the first time. The average retail price of cucumbers has, like other produce, fallen by around 50% over recent months.

In turn this has devalued the crop. “Every other supermarket jumped on the bandwagon and 50p now is the most you can get,” Derek Hargreaves, technical officer at the Cucumber Growers Association (CGA) told one website. “Go back a few years and cucumbers cost anywhere between 80p to £1.20. If they were worth 80p four years ago, by rights, it should be 85p now.”

With few commercial cucumber growers left around the Humber, the Lea Valley now produces 75% of the crop. While there are signs of investment in new glass, none of it so far is earmarked for cucumber production.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The post Cucumber growers struggling appeared first on Hort News on 27 November 2015.