German supermarkets develop floral and ready-to-eat with Landgard

The objective of Landgard is introduce a floral and pot plants section on the German supermarkets. “Very few supermarkets sell flowers, we have a lot of flower shops in Germany, nearly all of them are independent professionals” said Oliver Daniel, General Manager of Landgard Obst & Gemüse Holding. Landgard is Germany’s leading marketing organisation in the horticulture industry. with about €1,9 billion turnover.

180 farmers and 5 DC for fruit and vegetables

Fruit and vegetables make over 30% of the business or about €630 million. The main productions are apples, berries and green vegetables like celery, cabbage, salads and asparagus. The cooperative group gathers about 2.600 farmers, 180 of them grow fruit and vegetables. Landgard counts with 28 own cash and carry centers in Germany and one in Austria, several large distribution center for flowers and 5 distribution centers for fruit and vegetables.

The full basket for supermarkets inclusive tropical

To complement the German production, Landgard also imports overseas tropical fruit (banana, avocado mainly) and European products to complete the assortment and able to supply a full basket. “We have a special soft-ripening system controlled by artificial intelligence for banana and avocado” explains Oliver. Thanks to the intelligent software, water, oxygen, nitrogen and other substances are controlled so precisely that the fruit is ripened particularly gently and with pinpoint accuracy.” The system is the best you can get but bananas are too price-intensive, so we adapted it to avocado and mango”. For more information on how successful floral is getting on German supermarkets, you can write here.