Mushrooms

MUSHROOMS
The Fifth Kingdom

It is not a vegetable, it is a mushroom… It grows in the dark with high moisture, comes from a filament (mycelium) and it tastes great in many food preparations.

Mushrooms around the World
There are several big producers of mushrooms around the world namely: Holland, Poland, Indonesia, India and China. It is known that the South of China (Fujian Province) is the World Capital for Canned Mushrooms for the volumes, the associated costs and therefore the good prices.
ECOPOUCH Mushrooms from Holland
Imagine a technology that allows to put fresh mushrooms (and nothing else) into a metallic bag, then the bags go into the retort and you have a final product that has a 2 years shelf life at room temperature with all the benefits of fresh mushrooms.
Compared to fresh or canned, the ECOPOUCH mushrooms do have crucial advantages both for foodservice and manufacturers such as with a carton of 4 x 2.5 kg the customer has 10 kg fresh mushrooms. Other benefits are:

• Ambient shelf life
• Taste
• Texture
• Preserved in natural own juice that can be used as a basic for soups, sauces etc.
• No additives – 100% mushrooms
• Convenience
• Less injuries
• Free of Bisphenol-A
• Less waste
• Sustainable
• Competitive

Many Pizza Makers are turning to these ECOPOUCH Mushrooms recently.

From Holland to China

We have to make a distinction in flavor, texture and final appearance between the European mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) or Champignon de Paris and the Chinese Agaricus campestris. These distinctions are more important in some markets than others. Our Central American experience is that the Chinese Mushrooms have been around for many many years and are the market standard.
The mushrooms crop in the South of China goes from late December to early April. This is vital to consider because prices are better for Fresh Packed Mushrooms during the crop. Fresh Packed Mushrooms are the canned mushrooms that are processed in the packers’  processing plants during the crop, this means that the fresh mushrooms get to the processing plant and are immediately process into canned mushrooms. The flavor, color and texture of these mushrooms is a lot better than the Canned Mushrooms made during the rest of the year using Brined Mushrooms. Brined Mushrooms are the raw material that is storage during the crop to be used later to produce Canned Mushrooms. This is for spot purchases out of crop season that most of the time implies higher prices.
Have in mind that all Mushrooms raw material in China is produced in production houses (sometimes made of straw) with no temperature control. This means that yearly production of raw materials depends on how fast it gets cold in December. Also important is to consider that the growing purchase power of the Chinese population is putting pressure on the fresh mushrooms availability.

May I help you

Our recommendation is to make a yearly contract for Fresh Packed Mushrooms during the crop. An advanced payment of 20% of the contract total is required in order to produced all containers during the crop and storage them for delivery throughout the year.
After 20 years working with many packers of Chinese Mushrooms I can provide advice about:

1. Silhouette percentages, diameters of the cap and thickness of the slices in Pieces & Stems presentations (very important for Pizza Makers)
2. Quality Assurance before shipping (crop projections, raw materials, production, can quality, etc.)
3. Timing to negotiate good prices with the optimum quality.
4. Get what you bought.

A last crop (Jan 2016) reference price 24 x 425g DW 227g US$12.80 FOB Xiamen, China.