What does it take to be successful as one of Britain’s biggest growers in today’s climate? The past decade has seen big changes in the way supermarkets source fresh produce. The move to direct sourcing, led by Asda’s buyout of International Produce, means more growers are dealing directly with the retailers rather than middlemen. For some businesses, this means they not only grow and pack produce, but also have large marketing departments, NPD teams and are constantly trying to innovate.
Liz Bowles, south-west regional manager of EFFP, says not all growers have been able to rise to the challenge. “A number of businesses with entrepreneurial flair, or just luck, have developed the scale required to become growers, importers and packers and as a result have successfully been able to supply the retail market,” she explains. “They have also been able to act as consolidators, buying product from other growers who don’t have the infrastructure required to supply the retailers directly. Inevitably for some growers the additional roles required of them have been beyond their capacity to fulfill as required by their customers.”
In short, the largest successful growers today do far more than simply grow. Here, FPJ takes a look at some of the crucial elements for success.
What being a major grower means today
Andrew Burgess, director of agriculture at Produce World, describes it like this: “A larger-scale grower today has to have a complete range of skills. He has to be a marketer and understand his market, he has to be a salesman, he has to be a fantastic agronomist, a great organiser, technically very on the ball and an excellent finance manager.”
With a smaller supply base than ever before, growers need to be acutely aware of their customers’ needs, says Nick Tapp, head of agribusiness consultancy at Bidwells. “Since the mid-1990s we have seen the restructuring of the supply base into fewer, larger businesses. The development of the retailers and their concentration of economic power has come about through delivering very substantially what their customers want in terms of convenience and quality, and in turn their suppliers back down on the farm need to deliver that for them.”
Burgess adds: “All the different layers have been taken out of the supply chain now so it is all about the shortest possible route to market. The margins are so tight so you have to have a very good understanding of the market, your customer and the risk and reward that you are entering into when you decide to grow a crop.”
Capital investment
The economic crisis of the past four years has led to many growers having to make difficult decisions about what to invest in. While there have been some enormous investments, such as Thanet Earth in Kent and the creation of the large tomato growing glasshouse at Cornerways Nursery in Norfolk, EFFP research in 2010 found that many growers are concerned about any large capital outlay when they feel there is little commitment from supermarkets to purchase their produce. “To me this indicates there needs to be a better meeting of minds between growers and supermarkets,” says Bowles.
This has not stopped some of the biggest growers investing. Top-fruit grower Paul Mansfield, who grows around 17 per cent of the UK’s apples and pears, says a minimum 90 per cent of profits are ploughed back into the business. This includes an £8.6m expansion completed in 2009, which includes a new packing facility, 6,500 tonnes of additional storage and a six-bay chilled dispatch area.
Lean thinking
The principle of lean manufacture, pioneered in the car industry by Toyota, is now firmly ingrained in nearly every area of business, fresh produce included. The principle is to remove any process that doesn’t add more value than it costs. Often these are very simple changes that make a big difference.
Adrian Scripps added £28,000 a year to its bottom line by applying lean thinking to its apple packing process back in 2007. Following a masterclass led by the SMMT industry forum it identified that adding liners to each of the apple trays could be done each time a worker picked up a tray, rather than as a separate step that required an area set aside in the packhouse for trays to be lined.
Produce World has recently overhauled its brassica supply chain, making it far leaner. “We now harvest, pack, label, weigh and cool everything in the field,” says Burgess. “It then comes back to the warehouse for cross-docking ready to go to the supermarket the same day. The product is only handled once now and is probably 36 hours fresher than it would have been and it has cost us less money to handle it. We trialled it two years ago and we rolled it out last year.” Burgess says he is unaware of any other growers operating a similar system, “but I think we have got a few people looking over the hedge.”
Understanding consumers and the customer
Working closely with the supermarket or caterer is crucial for Britain’s biggest growers. For Produce World this extends to managing the category for the retailer, making recommendations of promotional strategies, ranging, pack size, NPD and pack design. Focus groups and till roll data also help growers understand what pack sizes are best. Cauliflowers have become smaller in recent years due to consumer research. “People were buying a big cauliflower and throwing half of it away,” says Burgess.
“We participate in consumer taste panels and focus groups,” adds Anne Rodgers, Albert Bartlett marketing executive. “We also use loyalty card data and a fairly heavy slice of instinct from our team’s category knowledge.”
Marketing
Albert Bartlett has invested in several national TV ad campaigns featuring Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross, and has also worked with chefs Michel Roux Jr, Andrew Fairlie and Sally Bee as brand ambassadors. QV Foods has also used consumer-facing advertising to market its Inspire range, which includes new potatoes, prepared vegetables and salads, and is fronted by MasterChef judge and former grower Gregg Wallace.
Florette has been at the forefront of high-profile marketing for many years. This year it announced a record £5m investment in its Summer of Feelgood campaign, which features athletics legend Roger Black as just one part of a major multi-faceted campaign that ranges from TV to print and social media marketing.
Innovation
In 2001, Albert Bartlett did what no other potato company had done before and launched a branded product, Rooster potatoes. According to Rodgers, the company decided this was the best way to try to reverse the decline in potato consumption. Nine years on, the company has added Purple Majesty to its brand portfolio and Rodgers says the move has reinvigorated the category. “We had a great initial tool to do this, which was a product that delivered taste, quality and versatility,” says Rodgers.
In the world of soft fruit, BerryWorld started supplying a black raspberry, Mac Black, higher in antioxidants than its red cousin, to retailers in 2010.
Other headline-grabbing varieties it introduced are the pineberry, a white fleshed strawberry studded with red seeds, and the strasberry, genetically a strawberry but with the appearance of a raspberry.
Produce World has launched several new varieties recently. Bellaverde, a sweet stem broccoli, hit the shelves two years ago; it also grew collard greens last year, a sweet tasting spring green brassica, and sweet candle carrots, which according to Burgess have a fantastic flavour raw.
Collaboration
Collaboration between growers may seem counter-intuitive - after all they are in competition with each other. However, collaboration does exist, partly in the form of joint marketing campaigns run by bodies such as the Carrot Growers’ Association, and partly in the form of organisations such as Fruition, a producer organisation of around 60 growers in the south east. The PO owns some 50 per cent of marketing organisation Worldwide Fruit and it also works closely with other marketing organisations Chingford Fruit and Total Worldfresh.
Mansfields is a member of Fruition PO and says the benefits are huge. “Knowledge transfer between the group is important as we always want to raise our game,” he says.“Our combined volume is sold coherently into the marketplace and we work together on storage and packing. By working together we meet market demands in the best manner for all.
The berry industry is perhaps one of the best examples of collaboration at its best, where marketing desks BerryWorld and BerryGardens have the lion’s share of the market and are able to negotiate on behalf of their growers. -
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