Thinking big: How Kwekerij van der Vleuten and ZON are building a forecast-led supply chain with hexafarms

Supply chain planning in fresh produce has historically relied on experience, intuition, and manual processes. While valuable, these become harder to scale as organisations grow and market demands become more complex and time-sensitive. For both the grower and the cooperative, the lack of structured forecasting at the grower level meant less predictability in harvest logistics, buyer commitments, and overall supply chain coordination.

Kwekerij van der Vleuten is taking the lead alongside a select group of additional ZON growers to deploy hexafarms' forecasting technology. The system is designed to complement existing grower knowledge, turning crop data and growing patterns into reliable, forward-looking production insights. The ambition extends beyond one farm: creating a consistent data foundation at the grower level that supports smarter decisions at every layer of the cooperative.

The impact spans better operational planning, more reliable buyer commitments, and a structured forecasting foundation that ZON can scale across its grower network. As Ricky Gommans from ZON describes it: "hexafarms allows us to proactively sell our growers' produce ensuring a better price over the entire season and more revenue for our growers."

Kwekerij van der Vleuten and ZON identified forecasting as one of the main challenges with direct bottom-line impact. Rather than a single-farm deployment, the partnership is structured as a cooperative-wide initiative: van der Vleuten leads alongside a select group of ZON growers, with the ambition to demonstrate the value of forecast-led planning and give the cooperative the tools to manage supply more predictably across its network.