Experience protects

The growth in demand for pumpkin seeds in recent years has brought many new players into the market, especially from Eastern Europe. With little experience, questionable infrastructure, unclear ownership structures, inadequate sales channels and motivated by poor advice from “experts”, they attempt to find customers for their goods. Then the high standards of food retailers and producers make it difficult for them to sell their stock. This often means that considerable volumes of harvested produce circulate on the market for two years or more, often in dubious hygiene conditions. Sooner or later, with the ever-increasing pressure on prices, such goods find their way into production. Very often, the process involves intermediary dealers and agents in several countries, with the result that the goods reaching customers have not been properly inspected (of course, the sample and first delivery will have been OK). Requests to “purify and sterilise” batches purchased in this way give us a picture of the real situation.

Estyria is trying to counter this trend. We do not work with commercial agents. Our primary procurement sources are still our contract farmers in Austria and Europe. Where we do buy pumpkin seeds from overseas, we import directly with the assistance of international laboratories such as SGS or Eurofins. In the case of our organic products, we take the same approach, or – to guarantee availability – we trust a handful of selected and well-known importers whose quality standards are as high as ours.

This is the sustainable way to ensure safe food supplies.

Wolfgang Wachmann
General Management