200% for Kika

This is the time when everyone looks back over the year that was: the good things, the beautiful things, and the things that we might want to do differently in the upcoming year.

We do that too. Actually, we’ve done it a lot over the past year. This year has been a special one for us, we’ve celebrated twenty years of Waterman Onions.

We marked the occasion with a grand open day. Do you remember? And do you also remember that we raised money for Kika? By the end of the day, we’d reached a great total of € 3,076.69, and we’ve doubled that amount.

Looking back is great, and sometimes also a good thing to do, but we’d rather focus on the present and the future, and contribute our help where it’s needed the most.

A view to the future

Waterman Onions proudly presents ‘Bodemgoud’, onions bearing the ‘On the way to Planet Proof’ sustainability label. These onions have an extra focus on the ‘local for local’ principle. “These are onions that have been sustainably cultivated,” explains Waterman director, Erik Waterman. “We’ve taken the environment into account throughout the entire production process for these onions. So they’re onions with a view to the future.”

From seed to sowing, from harvest to packaging – at every step in the process of developing Bodemgoud onions, we’ve considered sustainability and made conscious choices. All of our operations satisfy stricter than the usual statutory requirements for things like cleaner air, fertile soil, good water quality, more nature on the farm, and circular waste treatment and recycling.

On the shelves
Erik: “Consumers want to know that they’re buying a demonstrably more sustainable product. That’s why we’ve taken this initiative. We’ve actually already been working on it for some time now. The legal and other requirements are very strict; you can’t just grab yourself a sustainability mark. We started out with a cultivation project two years ago, and the first ‘Bodemgoud’ onions have just been harvested by four growers. The onions could be on the shelves from November. It was a whole process, but with a view to the future, extremely worthwhile.”

Would you like to know more?
There is considerable added value, not only for consumers, but also for growers. Want to know where and how to get started? Get in touch with Waterman Onions. We’d be happy to inform you about the process and the extra rules on top of the usual legal standards. We’re working together with Agrifirm to guide growers in this complex matter.

No more onion soup?

Whether or not onions will be available in our supermarkets is in question. The warm summer this year has led to a much lower harvest of onions.

“In the twenty years we’ve been operating, we’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Erik Waterman, director of Waterman Onions in Emmeloord. The company purchases onions from domestic and international growers, sorts and packages them, and delivers them to customers around the world.

Despite the decreased harvest, there’s no cause for panic. On the contrary. “In the Netherlands, onions are on the shelves all year round. We won’t have a shortage here.”

However, consumers abroad will certainly notice that 2018 has been a less successful harvest year. “We generally export the greater part of the Dutch onion harvest. This export will be lower this year, because all the onions will simply be gone at a certain moment. So there are still some challenges ahead for us, but we’re ready to tackle them.”

In the Netherlands, we’ll be able to eat onion soup as usual this winter. Whether the rest of the world will be able to do that is yet to be seen.