Capespan's restructure of its business into three divisions to bring marketing and procurement together could lead to the development of global strategies with multinational retailers.
Louis Kriel Jr has been named ceo of the fruit division as the South African group attempts to develop and improve relationships.
"The main change is we want to optimise and integrate marketing and procurement," Kriel told freshinfo. "Up to now procurement has been in South Africa and marketing all over the world where our customers are. We want to bring the two together to make the shortest route to the customer and the cheapest one. Having all this under the direction of one person we can really speed up change and it will be easier to drive the strategy of the group.
"Our business is so much more global now and some of our customers operate in eight, nine or 11 different countries. Country borders don't mean much any more so we must have global strategies for our customers."
For the time being there are no planned staff upheavals but this cannot be ruled out. "We may have had key account managers in each country in the past but now we might have one person looking at the needs of that customer globally. Our customers are moving at a tremendous pace and we want to be up their with them, delivering their requirements. This new strategy will allow that."
Capespan serves multinational retailers Tesco, Carrefour and Metro, for example, in countries across Europe and the Far East. It may now be possible for Capespan to go down a Del Monte-Walmart route with global sourcing on key lines.
Capespan Exports (Pty) Ltd, headed by newly appointed managing director Graham Botha, will house the fruit business units and their support services and will come under the fruit division. The other two divisions are logistics and investment. The logistics division will provide a centralised service for the entire group and all non-core activities - for example wine - are grouped under the investment division.
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