Come on! admit it; who hasn’t got a plastic fruit crate amongst their possessions, being very handy boxes in which to store things? Well, quite a few readers will probably be nodding.

But one thing is the odd plastic fruit crate and quite another is the literally thousands that have been disappearing from outside the plastic greenhouses. It appears somebody is selling them for plastic recycling.

The big fruit & veg companies behind these extensive plastic greenhouses have calculated a loss of 30,000 euros… Obviously the person that came up with this sum is still using pesetas in his head because that translates exactly into five million pesetas.

Mind you, although they are disappearing out of the farmers hands, it is the big horticulture companies that are losing out, as the plastic crates are handed over free to the farmers so that they can be used to transport their produce from the greenhouses to the horticulture-clearing warehouses belonging to co-operatives, mostly.

Lately, however, anything left outside the greenhouses is disappearing, such as handcarts and sack-trucks.

The Motril-based police are investigating these disappearances as they have been receiving between two and three theft reports per week, with most of the thefts taking place in Carchuna and Calahonda, but also around Motril’s Puntalón.

The Asociation de Empresarios Comercializadores Hortofruticolas de Andalucia, Ecohal, which has most of the said clearing warehouses on the Costa Tropical amongst its members, says that although the disappearances began last October, in just these first 15 days of January 20,000 crates have been stolen.

The plastic crates cost between 1.5 euros three euros, depending the size of the horticulture wholesaler; the bigger the company; the more the boxes; the cheaper they are per unit.

(News: Motril/East Coast, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)