Rungis: the largest fresh produce market in the world!

If you've ever visited Paris, chances are you've walked past Les Halles. Today, a shopping centre; formerly, the Paris market. When it became too large for the city, the French government decided in 1969 to move the market entirely. They chose Rungis.

Today, the market covers 234 acres. You only get in with a purchase card, as the market is meant for wholesalers. Still want to visit as an individual? Then you'll pay an additional fee. Once inside, you have your choice from a maze of department stores. 13,000 people trade some three million tons of goods a year here. This accounts for an annual turnover of around ten billion euros. 

The visit begins at four in the morning at Pavilion A4. Those who were not already wide awake are sure to be from the moment you walk into the huge hall. The place is freezing cold and along the central walkway, crates full of ice, with fresh fish and shellfish, are set up. Several businesses rent a spot next to each other here to sell their fish. It arrives from Brittany, Boulogne and even the Mediterranean Sea. 

Despite the early time, it is actually late here. The fish arrive around 10pm and are then prepared in another building. Starting at 2am, the blinds open and the sale begins. 

Those who want the best cuts of fish must be quick. Those who prefer a little more margin to negotiate on the price will wait until the big crowds have gone. At 4am, you mainly encounter that second category. In fact, several companies are already doing their daily clean-up. 

Some one hundred thousand tons of fish and shellfish leave here every year. Most of them are wholesale for Paris, but a significant portion goes to the rest of France or beyond. For example, cargo regularly leaves here for Zeebrugge.

The next stop feels equally cool: the meat sector. We enter the main pavilion, V1P. Again, we are walking down a long corridor with about 40 merchants on either side. The entire meat sector has 68 merchants, spread across several pavilions. 

Rows of carcasses hang from the ceiling. These hang in the merchants' front room, along the walkway. This is how buyers can see the quality of the meat. Behind them is an area for the "découpé," the cutting of the meat. Sales here are not by the gram, but by the kilo. The area behind it is extra refrigerated to preserve the meat and transport it further in trucks. The meat arrives here from all over Europe, including "blanc bleu belge" from Belgium.

What is interesting about this sector is that they work with a central cash desk. This is how transactions with their more than 9,000 customers take place in a secure manner. As such, they guarantee some discretion in terms of prices. You live here under the same roof as the competition, of course. 

Every year, more than a million tons of fruits and vegetables pass through Rungis. This makes it the most important sector in the market. From nine pavilions and a host of additional buildings, 342 companies are distributing fruit to the French market and beyond.

The sales pavilions are an impressive ants' nest of buyers and sellers moving, bargaining and trading in organised chaos along endless palettes full of fruits and vegetables.

For example, we visit 'Compagnie Fruitière', a company specialising in the production, transport and distribution of fruits and vegetables. They have some large plantations in Africa. Bananas and pineapples grow there that travel by ship to Rungis, via Port of Antwerp-Bruges.

They temporarily store those vegetables in a shed where it is always 13°C. At that temperature, both pineapples and bananas can stabilise. This is important, as not everyone wants the same banana. In Paris, people go to the supermarket almost every day. They prefer ripe, yellow bananas that are immediately edible. In rural areas, people typically shop once a week, as they prefer their bananas a little greener. 

The last stop is the flower sector. There is nothing to eat here, but cut flowers must also be traded fresh. They make two exceptions to this. You can also buy plants AND orchids in a pot here.