Mushrooms can be grown at home nowadays. With the new concept Archi.duc, consumers can even harvest three times. Archi.duc was introduced for the first time during Fruit Logistica by the Flemish Steven van Robays and Hilde Lapierre, both bo among mushrooms.
Available in the supermarket
The ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) trend is hot, and Steven and Hilde are playing into this. “We stopped cultivating mushrooms and focused fully on this new concept. The Archi.duc has been available since January 2014 in Belgian and French supermarkets and the price is around 5 Euro. “In the store you can buy the pot with the first load of growing fresh mushrooms. You store them at home, away from direct sunlight and at room temperature. The products are ready for consumption around three or four days after purchasing. Consumers can choose between white or brown mushrooms.”
Suitable for export
“As mushroom growers we saw the problem of a short shelf life,” continues Hilde. “Mushrooms are delicate products and exporting this product regularly meets limits. This concept is particularly suited for export. This takes us further than the Belgian border and we will also focus on retailers in other European markets such as France, Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia and Luxembourg. We get a lot of demand from a lot of different countries. It’s a more difficult story when it comes to further destinations, as the compost in the pot isn’t allowed everywhere.”Steven and Hilde have a patent on the product.
100% pure
“You can’t get fresher than this,” Hilde sums up the biggest advantage. “When you buy a regular box of mushrooms as a consumer, you don’t need them all at once and the shelf life is short. At Archi-duc you can harvest what you use.”
Source: archiduc champignons from Nathan Y. Van Gierdegom on Vimeo.
Source: Fresh Plaza; Archi.duc
