British consumers are accustomed to buying strawberries, raspberries and blueberries as a sweet snack, but are blackberries about to get their time in the limelight?
The product has been tipped by Berry Gardens MD Nick Marston to become as popular as the raspberry. Berry grower Anthony Snell, of AJ & CI Snell, adds: “There’s so much potential with blackberries, and the sweet-eating Driscoll’s Victoria is a great variety. We’d like people to add them to their berry purchases, as it’s another colour with its own benefits.”
For now, though, there’s plenty of work to be done. Steve Taylor, Winterwood MD, says: “There is enormous opportunity for growth with blackberries – it’s not demand that’s holding them back but the speed of varietal development. This is helping to improve the shelf life and taste combination, but hasn’t happened as quickly as with strawberries and raspberries.”
He adds: “It’s a personal feeling, but there are varieties of blackberries that are good for cooking and ones that are good in desserts that are naturally sweeter. Sellers make no effort to help the consumer know what the blackberries in the punnet are best for, and just hope that they are all suitable for either.” Roy Ekland, owner of berry breeder Ekland Marketing, pinpoints a transferrable example in the US berry market that has boosted blackberries. He says: “From our experience, increasing the presence in the market of reasonably-priced quality fruit builds the consumers’ familiarity with blackberries and expands the consumption of the fruit.
“By displaying different types of berries together at the point of sale, marketers create an attractive ‘berry basket’ that captures the attention of consumers. Wherever used, the berry basket has increased sales of all berries, benefiting consumers, marketers and fruit producers.”
Chris Rose, commercial controller at berry producer organisation Asplins, has another take on how the blackberry market can be taken onto the next level: “Blackberries have a lot of potential for volume growth, but the consumer needs to be confident that every berry they buy to eat fresh will be sweet,” he tells FPJ.
“While they are not exotic enough to be a new superfood, blackberries have a lot of health properties that could be marketed – incredibly high antioxidant levels and very low calorie, for example. It is sometimes seen as a disadvantage that blackberries grow wild and can be picked for free, but a good marketing strategy would tap into innocent, carefree childhood memories.”
Elsewhere in the category, the rain in Spain has caused pain. Pascal Simian, director at Berry Alliance, says: “The Spanish season started much earlier than expected, and was followed by cold, wet weather that has made the offer weak compared to the demand. For now it seems like we are back on track with a normal end of campaign.” In the UK, Snell notes that growers “lacked a bit of winter chill”, which could affect some of the crop. But the big talking point weather-wise for berry growers has been Storm Katie, which he claims has damaged polytunnels.
According to Rose, due to increased acreage, this season has started with a glut of UK glasshouse strawberries, resulting in “historically low prices” – a situation that he says will “right itself” as the season moves into early tunnelled fruit. Volumes this season, he says, are likely to be similar or marginally higher than last year. However, he cautions: “The main challenge will be limiting collateral damage from a retail race to the bottom. There is talk of premium lines reinvigorating the sector, but I remain sceptical.”
Despite the berry category smashing the £1 billion retail value barrier last year, with value and volume sales across the board continuing to impress, a number of issues are concerning growers and suppliers.
For Snell, the recently-introduced National Living Wage (NLW) is going to have a “massive impact” on the category. He says: “The Chancellor has arbitrarily decided that this wage goes up by seven per cent a year every year for five years, and when you consider that hand-harvesting labour accounts for 70 per cent of our costs, a 35 per cent increase in costs over the next few years is very significant; especially as we are a long way off having sustainable robotic packaging, as soft fruit is somewhat unique in the way it’s produced.
“While we fully support the idea, for those it benefits, how are we going to afford it? From what I understand, Costa Coffee put their prices up by 10p a drink the day after the NLW came into force, and no one has really noticed. Adding 10p to every pack of berries would certainly cover the additional costs we will be facing in one go, but that’s not going to happen. The danger is that this will drive production overseas, at a time when there’s already not enough production here.”
Michael Jarvis, of Scotty Brand, tells FPJ that there is “real confusion” over the sugar content of fruit and how this relates to daily intake of sugar: “The industry must make consumers understand that fruit is good for you, and is an important part of a healthy, balanced diet,” he urges.
Taylor, meanwhile, shines a light on some completely different issues: “The biggest challenge is matching the increased UK strawberry demand against imported supplies from Morocco and Spain mainly,” he says. It’s always interesting to see how much the UK consumer will pay more for UK strawberries as opposed to imports. The Spanish fruit is way better than 10+ years ago when it got a bad reputation as having poor flavour and the texture of a carrot, but it seems that the memories of consumers are very long. This is compared to blueberries, where there is very little UK loyalty, largely as the fruit is more comparable in quality and consumers have no reason to think UK fruit is any better. “In fact, quite apart from what the consumer thinks of the taste difference from various sources around the world, people still see blueberries as an imported fruit and not a UK homegrown fruit. UK volumes are now increasing to a point where they are more widely available, so it will be very interesting how this pans out, as the UK grower cannot compete with price alone to imported fruit, especially from early July to early September when the Polish fruit is not only good quality but also good price - for the consumer, that is.”
Rose, while pointing to past examples of triumph in times of adversity, stresses that concerns genuinely abound about the compounding pressures being placed on growers and suppliers. He says: “UK soft-fruit growers are resilient, and have learned to live with rising costs and static returns. For many years this has driven NPD and efficiencies, helped in many cases by membership of producer organisations, which access EU support through the Fruit and Veg Scheme.
“That said, this is not a sustainable model. Currently we are staring at the perfect storm where a high pressure system – near 11 per cent wage rises – collides with a deep and intensifying supermarket price war. There will be pain and there will be casualties. The message is ‘be big and really efficient, be niche or be gone’.”
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