A buying trip to Costa Rica and Belize last summer led Sainsbury’s banana and citrus buyer Matt North down a path which will see the store convert all its banana business to Fairtrade just 12 months later.
“It is all about doing the right thing,” North told frehinfo. “When I was out there I thought what a difference $10,000 would make to a community, they could build two or three classrooms with that sort of money. I thought if we do something there it could make a real difference to people’s lives.”
He promptly put his ideas to Sainsbury’s go-ahead md Justin King and the wheels were set in motion. “The idea has received the total support of the business,” said North.
News of Waitrose’s own lesser Fairtrade commitment was rushed out by the John Lewis Partnership chain the same week, but North rightly claims the scale of the Sainsbury’s move means it is in a different league. “We are committing to double our volume from small producers and have gone through everything with the Fairtrade Foundation and have been speaking with BananaLink and a lot of other parties,” said North.
Sainsbury’s has also been trying to source from larger plantations that often miss out on Fairtrade certification by virtue of their size. “We are effectively re-writing standards, and trying to give some of the business to some of the larger plantations, ” North explained. For example with one of the chain’s suppliers Sainsbury’s is switching from sourcing out of Costa Rica to sourcing from a Fairtrade co-operative of the same supplier’s growers in Colombia that previously had no market identified for their fruit. The fruit from the conventional Costa Rican plantation is now channelled to another of the suppliers’ customers in the UK.
Tesco had previously tried to go 100 per cent Fairtrade on bananas but only in a handful of stores, and this pilot move was not a success. According to TNS figures, Sainsbury’s already massively over-indexed on Fairtrade bananas enjoying a 40 per cent share of the UK retail market before it made the 100 per cent move, which is why the chain felt it was ready for such a bold step. “We have made a commitment to Fairtrade and at the same time removed the need for our customers to pay more for making this choice,” said North. “Now they know that whatever banana they buy in our stores it is guaranteeing a better deal to producers. Unless you make a committed step like that, it won’t work properly.”
North is now looking at where else Fairtrade can fit into the Sainsbury’s fresh produce offer and also at which other crops Windward Islands producers can diversify into.
“We just believe it is the right thing to do,” said North.
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