Hazera & HM.CLAUSE partnership at Fruit Logistica 2026 in Berlin

Hazera and HM.CLAUSE, both part of the Limagrain Group, will be present at Fruit Logistica from February 4 to 6 in Berlin. At their shared booth (31-A in hall 11.2), the two companies will highlight their latest innovative products and demonstrate how their collaboration adds value across the entire fresh chain.


Complete solutions for the fresh chain
At their shared booth, Hazera and HM.CLAUSE will present a selection of varieties tailored specifically for Fruit Logistica, offering visitors a clear view of how their combined strengths support every step of the fresh chain. Michal Taraska, Global Value Chain Lead at Hazera explains: “Our partnership allows us to bring together a wide range of knowledge and solutions, driven by a shared vision.” Manuel Ferrer, Food Chain Manager at HM.Clause adds: “We focus on delivering great taste while ensuring strong plant health, resilience, and sustainability.”

This year’s showcase highlights an extensive assortment, with tomatoes and watermelons taking center stage. “Bringing our portfolios together gives us the ability to offer growers and customers a broader, more impactful range,” Manuel notes.

Fresh innovations from HM.CLAUSE
“Freeman is an excellent variety for six-pack packaging, offering a unique flavour and vibrant colour that stand out in its segment,” Manuel explains. Perfect for creating shelf differentiation and boosting retail turnover, this mid-sized tomato combines delicious taste with ideal sizing for convenient six-pack formats, making it a strong performer in retail environments.

The Oxheart range—featuring HMC37961, Diamandia, HMC44413, and Flamansun—is designed for high- and medium-technology crops. These premium tomatoes deliver a striking colour palette from deep red and chocolate brown to flamed yellow, paired with an exceptional sensory experience. Manuel emphasizes that this vibrant spectrum makes Oxheart the perfect choice for gourmet and export markets where visual appeal and flavour are key.

The Marmande range brings authentic flavour and personality with varieties such as Adora, Ambrosía, Delisun, and Monteli. Offering shades from brown and red to flamed and pink, these tomatoes combine traditional taste with a modern twist, ensuring differentiation and premium quality for consumers seeking something special.

Manuel also highlights Mozzafiato and Sorprendor, innovative large-calibre peppers that deliver uniform fruits, thick flesh, and outstanding shelf life. These varieties provide high yield for growers and strong visual appeal for distributors, combining productivity with aesthetics to meet the expectations of both producers and retailers.

Finally, the broccoli varieties Pretorian and Gladiator maintain freshness and vibrant colour for longer, enhancing the consumer experience while reducing waste. Ideal for retail chains focused on quality and durability, these varieties ensure products look and taste their best throughout the supply chain.

Fresh innovations from Hazera
This year, Hazera is highlighting the rapidly growing segment of colorful snack tomatoes. “Healthy snack tomatoes are in high demand, and we’re excited to offer varieties that really stand out,” Michał says. The portfolio now features our International Taste Institution award winners, like Tentadero, an umami-rich cherry tomato with a perfect crunch, along with the Summer family varieties Summer Cool and Summer Soul, both prized for their excellent taste, very sweet flavor, and attractive yellow color. “We present healthy snack tomatoes with great flavor and texture you immediately fall for,” he adds.

In watermelons, Hazera continues to strengthen its lineup with Exotica, known as “the taste of summer” and a Fresh Market Award winner, offering a deep red color and crunchy texture. “Exotica captures exactly what consumers want: amazing taste, eye-catching color, and a reliable eating experience,” Michał notes. The range is complemented by additional innovative mini seedless varieties that provide consistent flavor, convenience, and all year round availability.

Together for fresher shelves
The collaboration between HM.CLAUSE and Hazera is built on years of experience. “Both sides bring deep knowledge and expertise,” says Manuel. Having led the development of flagship projects like Adora for HM.CLAUSE and Rosamunda for Hazera tomatoes, Manuel and Michal ensure that clients receive more comprehensive solutions, personal attention, and better results.

We are looking forward to meet you at Fruit Logistica.
Meet us at our shared booth 31-A in hall 11.2

 

Would you like to learn more? Contact us! 

Hazera’s newly appointed CEO reflects on Growing in the seed industry

A conversation with Hazera’s new CEO, Ofer Peleg

In his two and half years as Deputy CEO, and in leadership roles at dynamic global companies, Ofer Peleg has gained significant experience in business and agriculture. Now, as he steps into the CEO-role at Hazera, Ofer reflects on lessons learned and looks ahead to what the future holds.

“It’s been a fascinating 2.5 years, in which we’ve worked to optimize our efficiencies and leverage our capabilities”, Ofer begins. “I find the most valuable lessons to be this industry’s innovative nature and strong focus on sustainability.  That is what is leading us to find better solutions every day. I’m proud to be a part of it.”

Growing Together
“For me, the customer is front and center,” Ofer explains his priorities and his plans to strengthen Hazera’s focus on growing together with customers worldwide, and with the growers in a diverse global community in more than 130 countries.

“We’re putting great effort into adding value for them with our solutions, such as improving our loyalty programs, service level agreements and seed products to meet the needs of clients in different markets.”

“There’s a strong sense of partnership, professionalism and community within the organization. It is evident that our employees enjoy what they do and go above and beyond.” Ofer highly values the input he receives from employees. “It’s important to me to always be listening to what they have to say. I’ll admit that I can be demanding as a manager, but the greatest demands I make, are for myself.” To continue moving forward, Ofer says, Hazera as an organization needs to be flexible, agile and strongly focused on product quality. “By fostering a strong sense of ownership in everything we do, we can push our organization to excellence.”

Building on a century of growth
With Hazera celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025, Ofer takes a look at the future. “I’m honored that we’re part of the Limagrain Group, , together with our sister companies Vilmorin.Mikado and HM.Clause: the number one vegetable seed company in the world. Together, I see us continuing to play a huge role in the successes of the vegetable seed industry. And, most importantly, in the successes of the growers that we’ve been serving for nearly a century. We look forward to serving them for the century to come!” #Growingtogether


Ofer Peleg, Hazera’s new CEO

About Ofer Peleg
Ofer joined Hazera in 2022 as deputy CEO after working for four years at Netafim (precision Irrigation global leader) as Vice-President, Global Supply Chain. Ofer had also previously worked 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, most prominently at Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Press Release: IR ToBRFV varieties in pipeline

Press release
August 2022

Hazera announces varieties with intermediate resistance (IR) to Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus (ToBRFV) in pipeline

Hazera is proud to announce the launch of our ToBRFV intermediate resistant varieties- the optimal balance between protection and performance– providing the grower an effective tool to face the highly infectious virus, infecting tomato plants, fruit and affecting growers worldwide. The Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus poses a constant threat to growers worldwide, significantly reducing yields, affecting the quality of fruit, and systematically infecting other plants, as it is a very transmittable virus that can infect through soil, tools, water, and people’s contact.

Since ToBRFV hit, Hazera’s R&D team has been working tirelessly to find varieties capable of giving an effective level of ToBRFV resistance without compromising the yield and fruit quality we’ve invested years to perfect. Over the course of several years, Hazera researchers and agronomists invested endless resources to find solutions to address our growers’ needs worldwide. Moreover, according to Alejandro Szechtman, Hazera’s Portfolio Marketing Director, “These efforts included in-depth trials in many locations, under different conditions in a global scale, to confirm that we are able to provide the optimal solutions, with the right balance between performance and ToBRFV protection”.

Hazera is proud to announce a wide ToBRFV resistant variety pipeline worldwide, with which we will be able to tailor-make the optimal solution per market requirement, beginning with Italy, Greece, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, Israel etc’.

Hazera, through Limagrain’s upstream research, contributed to a network of internal and external collaborative discovery projects on ToBRFV using different approaches. This resulted in Limagrain being the first company to file a patent on ToBRFV resistance in tomato in 2017. While the first generation of tomato hybrids resistant to ToBRFV is being commercialized, Limagrain discovery programs continue to work intensively to find resistances against potential emergent more aggressive forms of this devastating virus.

“Our R&D efforts haven’t ended, we’re still investing to achieve higher resistance, and expand our portfolio to the benefit of growers worldwide,” said Szechtman.

Hazera is a global leader in the seed industry. Hazera has headquarters in both the Netherlands and Israel. We operate subsidiaries in 11 countries, together with a distribution network serving over 130 markets. Our partners operate in all kinds of climates, and under diverse growing conditions and market requirements. For over a century, our top priority has been walking alongside them, developing an enormous variety of seeds and providing comprehensive support every step of the way. Hazera’s team of experts works directly with growers to evaluate their needs, assist during variety selection and provide guidance and support throughout the crop cycle.

Hazera is part of the Limagrain Group, an international agri-business based in France. Being a farmers’ cooperative, the Limagrain Group understands the needs of its customers and has grown to become the largest seed company in Europe, specialising in vegetables, field crops and cereal products. Limagrain’s vegetable seed division is the second largest company in the industry.

Cucumbers in the South African Market

Long cucumber varieties in South Africa are required to be highly adaptable to weather changes, have strong disease resistance, and produce high-yielding crops of excellent quality.
Farmers from around the world prefer a product that will consistently meets these demands and tend to look for varieties that exhibit uniformity throughout the growing season, as well as a long shelf-life once the crops have been harvested.

Hazera is a world leader in vegetable seeds, and has a long, successful history of developing varieties with resistance to multiple diseases. Some of these varieties may offer a high level of disease resistance (HR), while in others this is more moderate, or intermediate (IR).
Hazera’s many years of experience is evident in its varieties of cucumbers. The company strives for customer and consumer satisfaction throughout the value chain.

Over the last three years, after several years of trials in diverse regions of the world, Hazera proudly introduced a new cucumber variety into the market. This variety is specifically adapted to the market requirements in South Africa and belongs to a new category that has been launched by Hazera worldwide – Pro Plus.

Pro = protection & Plus = performance

This series includes features of resilience that saves the grower the use of pesticides, reduces costs, increases profitability, improves their ability to meet standards of clean produce and environmental protection and exhibits excellent performance.

With Hazera’s Pro Plus series, growers can benefit from a reliable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly varieties for reducing crop damage and financial loss.

Island

The upcoming star over the past year, with a fruit length of 32 – 36 centimeters it produces a superior crop in peak winter. Its  big advantage is its resistance to several diseases: high resistance to CYSDV, CVYV and intermediate resistance to powdery mildew, as well as tolerance to ToLCNDV (New Delhi). Island   has attractive fruit – it is long, dark,  firm with noticeable ribs.  in addition, it has high percentage of high quality marketable fruits, there is almost no waste with this brilliant cucumber variety.

Hazera South Africa is constantly looking to improve our varieties and services for the local market. The breeding/R&D team behind the scenes strive for excellence and are attentive to market needs.  We are motivated to develop new beneficial traits and better the resistances of Hazera varieties.
Come try our new varieties from the Hazera Pro Plus Cucumber series, and stay tuned for exciting news regarding Pro Plus!
for more information: 011 659 4961

Developing for the future

In South Africa, skills shortage is just as severe as in the rest of the world. This is why a complete team of talented specialists is something to celebrate. The Product Development team at Hazera Seeds South Africa is such a team.

Johann Pretorius has been specializing in Onion production, travelling the country to visit trials of our Short and Intermediate day onion varieties. Johann also manages the Squash & Melon portfolios of the company. (more…)

New Hazera website online

A State-of the art, multi-functional, multi-regions platform

Today Hazera, specialised in vegetable varieties and vegetable seeds, launches a brand new website. This state-of-the-art site provides vegetable growing professionals with all information on vegetable varieties they need.

The structure of the site, its design and its functionalities are well adapted to today’s needs and preferences. The site is based on the latest technology, guaranteeing fast navigation and improved search functions, which makes the site very user-friendly. (more…)

The Latest Pepper Trends

Technological advancements have made it possible to develop new pepper varieties according to the needs and trends in different markets. Interview with Serge Benarous of Hazera.

There are a lot of ways to learn about a country’s culture. Apparently one of these ways is to look at their preferences in the peppers they consume. We interviewed Serge Benarous, Pepper Global Product Manager at Hazera, who explained how the international seed industry is developing different pepper varieties for different markets. (more…)