Spring has now definitely arrived at the Frischezentrum Melzig in Aschaffenburg, too. "In calendar week 14, the first German greenhouse strawberries arrived from Mutterstadt, but they were offered to us at relatively high prices. Dutch greenhouse produce was initially needed for the campaigns in domestic food retailing and is now being exported mainly to Scandinavia from calendar week 15 onwards. As a rule, better prices are achieved there than on the German market. Regarding the current bloom, I estimate that there will still be no comprehensive supply of German outdoor strawberries at Easter," managing director Bastian Wissel reports on request.
At the moment, the wholesale company is mainly relying on strawberries of Italian origin. The Easter business will also be covered with Italian goods. Wissel: "There has recently been increased rainfall in large parts of Italy, which in turn has had a negative impact on the quality and shelf life of the goods. However, the situation is more serious in Spain, where extreme rainfall in the southern growing region of Huelva has caused harvest losses of up to 50 percent. As a result, supply quantities are extremely scarce, and prices are 10-15 percent higher than last year."
© Frischezentrum Aschaffenburg Melzig GmbHCurrently, strawberries from three different countries of origin can be found at the Frischezentrum Melzig. From left to right: German greenhouse produce, Italian strawberries, and Spanish strawberries.
Difficult first quarter of 2025
Overall, the current mood in wholesale is rather subdued, observes the regional supplier to food retailers and restaurants. "The first quarter was very difficult in both sectors. In 2024, we had the advantage of Easter coinciding with the end of March, which boosted quarterly sales accordingly. This year, however, Easter falls very late, which is why business is getting off to a much later start. Nevertheless, we are seeing that the sunny weather and the first signs of spring are bringing new momentum to the retail sector. In this respect, the trend is already steeply upwards from the first week of April."
Expansion of the gastronomy division
Melzig was founded in 1949 and over the years has become a point of contact for food retailers and restaurants, as well as other wholesale customers. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the associated closure of restaurants, the focus has increasingly shifted to supplying owner-managed food retailers, with this sector currently accounting for around 60 percent of total sales. "We are keen to expand our food service division again, on the one hand to spread the risk, but also because of the margins. The latter factor has become all the more important due to the doubling of the toll and increased personnel costs. At the same time, we have noticed that consumer behavior in Germany has changed dramatically within just a few years. This is forcing the leading food retail chains to offer more and more entry-level products instead of premium products. Both the shelf space and the appreciation for the latter category, which has always been our core competence, are thus trending downward."
© Frischezentrum Aschaffenburg Melzig GmbHLeft: Managing Director Bastian Wissel with premium avocados. Right: A warehouse worker performs quality control using a tablet.
Digitization to increase competitiveness
Another focus of the company is digitization. Even before COVID-19, an initial prototype of an online store had been launched, and now the company relies on the modern software from Orderlion in all areas of sales. "About a third of our customers already shop digitally, and we want to increase this share to 50 percent in the coming years. It was very important to us to reduce the amount of order processing in the internal sales department and thus save both labor time and costs. Another motivation was to increase efficiency: unnecessary paperwork such as delivery notes and the like is no longer required. A weekly push message is now sent instead of a faxed quotation, as is still common practice in many places. In this respect, the process works perfectly. Our next goal is to digitize our company's purchasing side accordingly in the medium term," Wissel concludes.
For more information:
Bastian Wissel
Frischezentrum Melzig
Magnolienweg 46,
63741 Aschaffenburg
Tel: 0 60 21 / 150 87 - 0
Fax: 0 60 21 / 150 87 - 10
info@melzig-gmbh.de
www.melzig-gmbh.de