Lagache Expedition has become an expert in peppers from Belgium and the Netherlands
01 April 2025
🫑🫑🫑 A t Lagache Expedition, the pepper – a vegetable with multiple benefits – has become strategic.
Some market data (sources CTIFL, Kantar, Agreste, Douanes – average 2020-2022) :
- 3.1 million tonnes of peppers (fresh and industrial) are produced by the 27 EU member states. Almost half of this comes from Spain, with 1.5 million tonnes. The Benelux countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) are a close second, with 463,000 tonnes of peppers.
- 25,700 tonnes are produced each year in France (which ranks 10th) for a total consumption of 146,800 tonnes. The main production areas are the South-East, South-West and Loire Valley.
French peppers are marketed from June to October, with a peak in the summer.
This means that France imports over 80% of its peppers to meet consumer needs .
Spain and Morocco account for 87% of these imports, with Belgium and the Netherlands accounting for just 11%.
Belgium and the Netherlands: a trump card for the French market
The Belgium and Netherlands production basin starts in mid-March and finishes at the end of October. Around 16,000 tonnes are imported into France over this period.
At Lagache, we’ve been faced with a shortage of peppers from France for the past 4 years – a subject we’re also working on – and we’re firmly convinced that peppers from Belgium and the Netherlands represent a great opportunity. We’ve seized this opportunity and made it a strategic focus for our development.
We’ll tell you why:
- Impeccable quality from the beginning to the end of the campaign, thanks to the most rigorous selection of our producers in close collaboration with the dial cooperatives.
- Specific varieties selected to provide the right compromise between productivity, quality, taste, firmness and colour.
- The right climate: Benelux peppers don’t suffer from the extreme heat of southern Europe.
- A production area close to where the produce is consumed: it’s obvious that a pepper from the Benelux countries will travel far fewer kilometres than one from southern Europe or North Africa. And we are committed to CSR.
This is the approach we are defending with determination and conviction with our customers, who until now were used to sourcing their produce ‘by habit’ from southern Europe.
Four years on, we’re convinced we’re on the right track, and we’re reaping the rewards (or rather the peppers 😊). In the last campaign from mid-March to the end of October 2024, we marketed 2,700 tonnes of peppers from the Benelux production basin. Thank you to our customers for placing their trust in us.
And this is just the beginning! We expect to market more than 3,000 tonnes of peppers in 2025 and around 5,000 tonnes within 3 years.
What we think is the most important thing to remember about this focus on peppers:
France produces barely 20% of what it consumes, even though from a climatic and agricultural point of view, it has real potential.
That’s why we’re actively working on a number of projects to develop pepper production in the Hauts de France region.
These projects are complex and costly. They require specific know-how and major investment, not to mention lobbying to gain access to farmland. So, in the meantime… let’s start thinking in terms of proximity and quality, with products from Belgium and the Netherlands!
