Delegates at this year’s Eurofruit Congress Middle East, which took place on 9-11 November in the region’s hub for fresh produce, Dubai, were treated to a discussion with Jannie Holtzhausen, CEO of retailer Spinneys, who revealed the group’s plans for the future as well as the major opportunities and challenges facing retailers in the Middle East.
Over the past seven years, Spinneys has grown from eight stores to some 49, he said, with a new store scheduled to open in Bahrain by the middle of 2010.
Mr Holtzhausen explained that quality was one of the retailer’s top priorities. “We wish to be regarded as the best supermarket in the Middle East, not the biggest,” he told delegates. “We never compromise on quality.”
Mr Holtzhausen said that over the last five years Spinneys had increasingly started to import produce directly from producers in order to improve freshness. “The aim is not to cut out the middle man, but if we can reduce the supply and negotiation time by a couple of days, we want to do it,' he explained. 'We import a full range of produce, including fruits and vegetables with very short shelf lives from far away. I think we do this extremely well.
“In the UAE, we have to import from wherever we can in order to ensure year-round availability. As technologies develop, this job becomes easier. The two biggest technological developments over the past few years have been in packaging and refrigeration. The UAE would be a much more boring place without these developments.”
Delegates also heard the ways in which organisations are acting to tackle the growing problem of obesity, both in the Middle East region and elsewhere. Dr Serah Theuri, of Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, stressed that obesity was becoming a serious problem in the Middle East, with four Gulf States – Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – in the top 20 most obese countries in the world.
“The situation in all countries in the Gulf is worsening,” she said. “Boosting the consumption of fruit and vegetables can go a long way to solving some of the major health problems affecting people in the region.”
