Feldmann preserved cucumbers

Wolfgang Schneider
Mr. Schneider, the managing director gave an overview on the activities and the history of the company, which is located at the outscirts of Neu Lübbenau. In 1992 he moved from Karlsruhe to this location (Neu Lübbenau) buying an old local company. In 1998 a new modern processing plant was inaugurated, where mainly processing and canning of vegetables like cucumbers, beetroot, sellerie, and onion are done.

The volume handled varies from 15000 to 17000 t/year, which means 250 – 300 t /day during the respective season. The vegetables are purchased within the near surrounding in Spreewald (80 % is the minimum according to the PGI specification) in the case of cucumber from four different suppliers.

The price per unit is agreed upon before harvest and the producers deliver to the company up to 5000 t each. For other vegetables the suppliers are located in Poland or even Hungary. 115 people are employed during the main season, during the other time they amount to 90. The processing is done according to IFS (International Food Standard).

SpreeWald uses its own company brand for marketing and not the Spreewald umbrella logo. Nevertheless, the company is member in the Spreewald Verein, mainly because of the PGI brand for cucumber, which belongs to the Spreewald association. The memeberhsip fee is 100,00 Euro per year.

It is to be seen as an example where a private company only partly is committed to the regional brand

Regarding the distribution channels for the products (canned vegetables), there are three: Cucumbers being sold under their own label (SpreeWald Feldmann): ~35 % Different vegetables labeled for independent disounters as no name products No name vegetables for further processing by other food processing companies, who produce salads for example Afterwards Mr. Müller did a guided tour through the processing units within the company. At this time mainly sellerie and beetroot were washed, peeled and canned in one big processing hall.