Mostafa El-Sayed walks his strawberry rows in Beheira at dawn. Two thousand kilometres north, a Dutch buyer is ordering breakfast on the train. Between those two people, a great deal of paperwork — and our name on every box.
We are an organic produce trading house. We move fresh, frozen and dried fruit, vegetables and herbs from Egyptian growers to retailers in the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics. We also bring Dutch seed potato, hybrid seed, and greenhouse technology the other way.
We are not a forwarder. We hold long-term forward contracts with our growers, co-invest in the cost of certification, and take a fixed, declared margin per kilo. On any line of our catalogue, you can ask which farm, which field, which family — and we will name them.
This is the spring issue. Six pages, one ledger, forty-six farms.
Four of the forty-six. Each contracted at planting, paid against EU-organic delivery, certified at our cost.
On a kilogram of Beheira strawberries, sold to a Dutch retailer at €4.20 wholesale, the split looks like this. We publish it because we want to.
The certification line is the GlobalG.A.P. and EU Organic audit cost we carry on the farmer's behalf, repaid out of the margin line if and only if the season clears. The grower never repays a failed crop.
The fresh and IQF, dried and frozen — and the grower behind each one. Pomegranate is not a SKU. It is the Wonderfuls of the El-Manfalouti family in Assiut.
An essay on the practice of signing growers in October for the following season's strawberries — and why it changes who decides what gets planted.
We followed one twenty-eight-tonne reefer of artichoke hearts from a field in Nubaria to a cold store in Barendrecht. Nine days, six handovers, seven named people.
Carrying the audit, not assigning it. Every shipment travels with the lot-level paperwork; every farm with the audit cost shared.
Membership: GroentenFruit Huis (Netherlands), AFEX & EAFI (Egypt).