PRESSRELEASE: Eosta expands organic cranberry program bringing festive fruit without the environmental cost

Beginning in early November and running through to late December, Eosta will have cran-berries available from The Cranberry Company, a true pioneer in farming with nature, who grow the fruit on 18 hectares of peat soil in The Netherlands’ Krimpenerwaard region.

It may be intrinsically linked with the festive season, but the fruit is increasingly in demand across Europe and beyond, with large volumes being exported to organic and speciality food shops in Germany, plus the UK organic grocery chain Able & Cole.

However, The Cranberry Company’s biggest impact has arguably been closer to home, and it has been as much a result of the grower’s pioneering production methods as the products themselves.

A viable alternative

Grown in wet peatlands where decades of dairy farming have caused soil degradation, water loss, and placed already low-lying areas under increased threat from rising sea levels, The Cranberry Company has shown that replacing cattle with cranberries is not only environmen-tally beneficial, but is also economically viable.

In areas where dairy farming is becoming increasingly problematic, cranberry cultivation pro-vides a climate-positive alternative for wet peatlands where keeping the soil wet is essential to helping reduce CO₂ emissions due to peat oxidation, prevent soil subsidence, and stimu-lating biodiversity.

But, more than this, the innovative production methods being used by The Cranberry Com-pany help ensure a better quality product with a long shelf life. Rich in antioxidants and vita-mins, the 100% organically-grown cranberries are dry-harvested rather than the common ‘wet harvesting method,’ which involves flooding fields and shaking berries loose.

Consistently high quality

According to The Cranberry Company’s Matthijs Crouwers, this approach results in firm, flavorful berries with consistently high quality, and a longer shelf life than wet-harvested ber-ries.

He said: “We've been underway almost 10 years, growing in peatlands where soil substance is a big problem. We are located in an area two-three meters below sea level, and draining the peatlands for diary farming causes the level of the land to fall even further.

“We need to re-wet the peatlands, and we have found we can grow cranberries on them. But we don’t just grow organic cranberries, it’s also related to peat restoration, soil substance, combating climate change, and helping biodiversity.”

Supported from Eosta from its initial harvests, Crouwers said The Cranberry Company had been expanding production every year, and was now confident of being able to supply all the cranberries Eosta will sell during the current season.

Casper Velthuijs, Eosta’s Product Manager for Cranberries, said: “These are great qual-ity berries with excellent shelf life that enables us to overcome some of the storage issues associated with cranberries.

“From a sustainability point of view, this is also a valuable product because oxidizing peat landscapes is a major issue, and they have found a solution for it.”

About Eosta

Eosta – with Nature & More as transparency brand – was established in 1990 and over the past 35 years has developed into a leading European distributor of organic fruit and vegeta-bles. The company is known for its sustainability campaigns such as The True Cost of Food, Natural Branding, Living Wage and Save Our Soils.

Eosta’s Organic Raingrown Avocado won the inaugural True Price Award in 2025, a prize that has been created to highlight fair pricing and transparency in fresh produce supply chains. It was also awarded Bioproduct of the Year 2025 in The Netherlands, and took third place at the 2025 Fruit Logistica Innovation Awards.

See www.eosta.com and www.natureandmore.com. The Sustainability Flower model can be viewed here.