Rampant electricity prices stop Swedish winter tomatoes

Mindaugas Krasaukas, site manager at Nordic Greens in Trelleborg, describes it as a big step backwards when it is no longer possible to grow tomatoes in Sweden during the winter.

– There are many people who try to buy Swedish and we receive many positive emails and messages from our consumers. It’s really sad, they will miss our products.

This is Sweden’s largest tomato farm, which spreads over 160,000 square meters of greenhouse space on the outskirts of Trelleborg. For eight years, winter cultivation has been underway in some of the greenhouses. The winter plants are usually planted at the end of September, but everything is based on them receiving additional heat and light.

The heating takes place with the help of the company’s own chip boilers, but the lighting requires electricity and the lights must be on from October to April.

– Our electricity bill used to be at least one million kroner a month. With these prices prevailing now, we can land on five to six million a month, says Mindaugas Krasaukas.

Most expensive electricity price range

Producing your own electricity could be a possibility in the long term, but it would take at least two years to carry out such an upgrade and right now it is impossible to know if it would pay off.

– We have to wait and see what happens with the electricity price during the winter.

The location in Sweden’s most expensive electricity price area is a major disadvantage for a company that requires electricity, he notes. But right now there are no serious plans to move.

– Unfortunately, we cannot move the cultivation north. But who knows – when you look at the electricity price in Norrland, it’s actually not a bad idea to build plantations there and illuminate them all year round.

Sweden’s second largest tomato company, Elleholm’s tomato farm in Mörrum, Bleking, is also located in electricity price area four with the highest electricity price.

Thomas and Carola Lilja runs the company on 60,000 square meters of greenhouse space and before last winter they invested SEK 7.5 million in lighting to be able to grow all year round in part of the facility. It was a flop.

Had to wither down

– When we started the lighting in October, the electricity prices started to skyrocket, says Thomas Lilja.

In December, they were forced to turn off the lights on half the area and let the tomato plants wither. The lights are still on, but growing tomatoes this winter is not on the map.

He believes that it will be difficult to get even imported tomatoes in the shops this winter, as large parts of the illuminated cultivations in the Netherlands will also be down as a result of the high gas price. Mindaugas Krasaukas makes the same assessment: Production in the other two major tomato-growing countries Spain and Morocco will not be enough to cover the loss.

– Tomatoes will be much more expensive this winter and it may happen that it will not be possible to find tomatoes at all in the shops, quite simply, says Krasaukas.

“Very tough year”

The high electricity prices, combined with soaring prices for fuel and inputs such as fertilizer, will hit the entire Swedish crop, not just what is grown in greenhouses, believe Bertil Trulsson, chairman of Sydgrönt, Sweden’s largest economic association for the sale of fruit and vegetables.

He himself grows white cabbage, carrots, onions and beetroot, among other things. If he is to be able to grow on the same area next year, he must be guaranteed a much higher price, he states.

– I am afraid that we will have a very tough year next year with very high prices for the goods that are sown and planted. There will be a shortage of everything.

The division of Sweden into four electricity price areas, where the majority of food production takes place in the most expensive areas, is particularly unfortunate in the current situation, believes Bertil Trulsson.

– It will be very difficult for the consumer, because it is the consumer who has to pay for this feast.

Government support

So far, there is a decision on government support for greenhouse cultivation of a total of SEK 40 million, which will be paid out during the autumn until the new year. The support does not take into account the electricity price range the business is in, but is the same for everyone: SEK 20 per square meter in heated greenhouses, says Marie Törnquistagricultural policy investigator at the Swedish Agency for Agriculture.

For the largest growers in Trelleborg and Mörrum, however, the support does not change very much, since the maximum amount paid out from the state is 55,000 euros (just over half a million Swedish kronor).

The support may not be enough to achieve profitable production in some energy-intensive companies, admits Marie Törnqvist. And when the support package was designed, they only took into account the cost increases until the summer, she points out.

Could the overall result be that we will eat less Swedish-grown food in the future?

– We hope not, but absolutely, it is the case that farmers and growers have to adapt to the calculation that exists. To the extent that the tomato growers judge that there are too many costs in relation to income, this may be the case.