Utopia UK was set up in 1994 by Kevin Jameson and Nigel West. The pair spent a decade building the exotics specialist into one of the prime performers in its sector. From its site at Enterprise Way, Spalding, the firm now imports exotic fruit and vegetables from 37 countries for supply on to major supermarket chains including Waitrose, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Costco.
Ten years later, the founding pair decided at the same time to relinquish their joint managing director roles, when bringing in ex-M&S man Matthew van Lier to take sole charge of that role. Both founders remain integral to the business; Jameson as cherry specialist, while West works on the procurement side and develops the company’s continental European business. Utopia Holdings was formed at the same time, to enable more focus on overseas interests.
“Kevin and Nigel recognised the changing dynamics of the market and brought me in as a single leader, to allow themselves to focus on other areas of the business,” says van Lier. “When I arrived, I knew it was either a job for two weeks or 20 years, but on the first day they both ripped up their joint md business cards and showed me their commitment to a Utopia for the future.
“They have given me the autonomy I needed to implement new business practices, systems and people, but they have also been extremely collaborative. It has been a big learning curve for all of us, with some significant highs and lows.”
Utopia has concentrated its investment on two key areas, people and technology. “We have a culture of investing in our people, whether that is our growers, our source partners, or our own team in Spalding and around the world,” says van Lier. “Technology-wise, we have two state-of-the-art SACMI machines, one in Spalding and one in Costa Rica. People and technology are the key elements to achieving our objectives of supplying the right quality of produce first time, every time.”
The company has also forged many formal and informal partnerships and joint ventures, which van Lier says “have paid dividends to the UK market on a regular basis”. He adds: “We are constantly evolving. For example, we have a three-way partnership with [Argentinian] Rio Claro and [Turkish] Alara cherry specialists, which is beginning to produce the first cherries of any volume to come out of a part of southern Argentina that is desolate and inhabited by very few people. Based on a theory that the region would produce the latest cherries in the southern hemisphere, we committed to almost having to create a new infrastructure there on an annual basis. It represents a significant investment and a leap of faith, but in the third year, the quality of the fruit has surpassed expectations and it is hitting the valuable late February-early March window.
Utopia is also actively working in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand to discover new growing regions, new sources, new products, and to extend the shoulders of the seasons for key fruits in its already extensive portfolio. “We have identified new sources for passionfruit, for example,” says van Lier, “that will prove crucial in meeting future demand, when there are inevitable shortages in traditional source countries.
“Our technical teams are constantly somewhere in the world, often in inhospitable locations, looking to open up new opportunities, epitomising the effort we go to, to provide the UK market with high-class exotic fruit all year round. We source fantastic fruit in places like Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Laos and Guinea.
“It can be challenging to get insurance for people to go into a war zone, but it’s all part of our key role of validating the entire supply chain. It can be easy to forget sitting here in the UK that a lot of growers in under-developed countries have no access to computers or phones, and no exposure to the standards of the developed world.”
Trends
The core tropical and exotics business of Utopia is operating in a £180m marketplace, which grew by 3.5 per cent in the latest 52-week period (TNS). “That is typical of the fruit sector overall,” says van Lier, “but within our category there are some very interesting trends. Mango consumption continues to increase significantly, while figs and passionfruit have made big annual gains. The UK population is changing in its nature, and people are also becoming more and more accustomed to consuming what are still considered niche varieties.”
The standards demanded by consumers are on the rise too. “Two years ago, the papaya sector was dominated by seafreight product, ripened on arrival. Now, we are seeing most of it truly tree-ripened and airfreighted into the UK. That opens up an interesting debate, of course, but papaya sales have come out of decline and started to expand because we are giving consumers fruit that they want to eat.
“The consumer is a constant focus for our company; we hold regular customer panels and find them very enlightening. Some of the things you find out are fairly obvious with hindsight, but it is easy to miss them when you are so close to the product. It might be different packaging ideas, maturity levels or varieties they tell us about and, while the panels are not cheap, the results make the exercise worthwhile. It gets us thinking about the parts of our business that we had either moved away from or forgotten. TNS data is also very important to us; I think if you are not engaged in these types of activities, you lose contact.”
Another activity van Lier believes has added to business performance is slightly more unusual. “One of the key drivers for me in the last four years, as it will be moving forward, has been the requirement to improve the efficiency of every part of the supply chain from grower to consumer,” he explains. “We have got involved with a government-funded best-practice cross-fertilisation scheme, which allows our team to visit manufacturing companies in other areas of business, and vice versa, to pick up tips. A group of engineers from Rolls Royce came here, and what they noticed was a real eye opener. They identified the number of times a product is physically handled as it goes through the chain - a carambola, for instance, was handled 10 times, due to the airfreight, packing and labelling requirements. As a result, we were able to analyse the process, implement a best practice model, and bring that number down to four.” The same model can be applied, of course, to other products.
“You are only limited in this game by your own imagination; there are a huge number of products out there,” van Lier says.
Well prepared
On the face of it, perhaps, you would imagine that the opening of a new company in the prepared sector in the current economic climate is a bold move. It comes at a difficult time for the industry and will inevitably raise eyebrows, but the groundwork has been extensive. “We recognised the changing consumer patterns in the UK and the need to satisfy the demand for consistent-quality prepared fruit,” van Lier says. “And as margins for core fresh products have come under more pressure, we were also receiving demands from our supply base for ways to utilise more of their crop.
“Our pineapple grower in Costa Rica told our team over there that he was wasting 40 per cent of his fruit, due mainly to minor skin blemishes or other external blemishes. He wanted to supply that fruit to someone in the UK who would give a fair return, rather than compost it or send it for baby food.”
Utopia UK already supplied some of the key prepared fruit suppliers in the UK, but decided the time was right to branch out on its own. The 36,000sqft Utopia Prepared site in Gosberton, which will open next week, represents its first step up to the plate.
Only half of the site will be used when phase one of the project kicks off. As well as an additional outlet for the firm’s suppliers around the world, it will offer an integrated supply option for customers in the £190m prepared fruit market, says van Lier.
Simon Ball, commercial director of Utopia Prepared, will head up the new operation as it tries to grab its share of the market that grew 42 per cent last year. He says the venture is far from being simply a method to use waste product: “Utopia has a very tight grower base, which gives us a distinct advantage over existing suppliers of prepared fruit to UK customers. We have better control of and focus on our fruit, and will be able to directly influence procurement of the future.”
That influence, he says, will eventually see a sizeable proportion of the fruit grown from seed with the prepared sector in mind. “We already import fruit that has been specifically grown for the prepared sector and, ultimately, we want to reach the stage where we are growing more fruit to the sizes, yield expectations and flavours that the prepared market requires. It’s happening already with mangoes; we can work with growers to alter the agronomy in line with the size and flavour of mango the market requires. But we can do so much more.
“We have the category management, the new product development and the grower base; others in the prepared fruit sector might have one or two of those, but not all. No one has ever made that commitment to this marketplace. We will take the expertise within Utopia’s produce business and apply that to a food business mentality, looking at each process and trying to do it better than it has been done in the past.
“We want to create a range of dishes for meal occasions, and we will also look to move into prepared vegetables in time. Throughout, however, we will go through a scientific process before making our decisions, researching consumers, profiling the textures and flavours they want, the in-store ranging, merchandising, price points and penetration rates,” says Ball.
Every link in the chain stands to benefit, he says. “The growers, ourselves, our customers and the end consumers will all win,” he adds.
Within the “ourselves” part of that equation, some of the early wins have been made by staff, as Utopia has gone to unusual lengths to give the people who will work for its new company the training that will see them hit the ground running when the facility opens for business. “We wanted to make a difference with our staff, and invest time, effort and money into building a team from day one,” says van Lier. “The skillset we require for the prepared sites is quite specific and different to our core UK business. So we have aligned ourselves with a university founded on food manufacturing, and are training all of our staff to NVQ Level 2.”
Academic help
It is handy, of course, that the University of Lincoln’s Holbeach campus is a few short miles down the road from Gosberton, and last week, when FPJ visited, new staff were being put through their paces. “The university is a huge asset for the trade; its facilities are tremendous, and it’s right on our doorstep,” says Ball.
Human resources director Claire Baker takes up the story. “Normally, agency workers are looked at as an add-on part of the business, but that is not the way we see it. We are inclusive of agency staff at Utopia UK, and feel it is vital that they are integrated and treated the same as full-time people.
“For Utopia Prepared, we have asked agency PVP to recruit very specifically, and worked closely with them on the project. There are six different languages being spoken here today by our staff, but it was very important to us that each one of them had a decent level of English, to make the transition easier for all concerned. Some recruiting was done through the local press, and the response was phenomenal. We had 260 applicants for one role.”
Once the recruitment was done, the next phase kicked in. “We have made a big play of putting these guys on a pedestal, tailoring their personal development programmes to our needs,” Baker says. “They have embraced it brilliantly; for a few, it is the first time in their lives they have been given this sort of training, but they have been sharing and co-operating with each other, and we will see the benefit of the teamwork it instils on-site.”
The training also puts a significant marker in the sand as to what the company expects from its employees. “Doing this pre-start is perfect, because we don’t have to worry about operational schedules, etc. All of the things that usually would get missed off in the rush, we have been fortunate to have the time to include.”
The list would be long in full, but the first week of training, at Holbeach campus, went through areas such as product awareness, food safety, on-line skills (such as knife control and safety), chemical handling, and yield improvement. This week has been spent on-site in Gosberton, getting used to the surroundings, the machinery, and practising techniques and processes for the first real-time production run.
“We are already really pleased with the calibre of staff we have attracted. But this training will stand us all in good stead when the doors open. The team knows this is no one-hit wonder, and that we will continue with their development programmes when we are off and running, and we hope also to extend this exercise to our existing staff in Spalding,” Baker says.
Local commitment
A further indication of the planning that has gone into the new venture is the ongoing dialogue that has been established with villagers in Gosberton, who needed convincing that another food factory on their doorstep was acceptable after noise and smell issues with previous incumbent Geest, which closed its pizza factory down four years ago, and before that Gosberton Farms. The site is flanked by houses on two sides, and villagers have been reassured that the prepared facility is a very different prospect from what went before.
“We pride ourselves on our local community involvement,” says Baker. “It is vital for us to be considered part of, and not an outsider to, the village.
“All employees are expected to respect the village and its residents, and this forms a part of our induction process and employee contracts. And this has been communicated to residents through meetings with parish councillors and letter drops.
“We have also established a helpline, which rings straight through to my mobile at the moment and gives immediate attention to any local resident who has a question about the new company.” Once the factory opens, its manager will take on responsibility for that 24-hour facility, making the company responsible immediately if any of its promises lapse for whatever reason.
A number of Gosberton residents have secured jobs at the new site. “We will look to support local community needs in any way we can. We have already dealt with a lot of their concerns and made good on several of the environmental promises we made. We are also supporting the local school with its healthy-eating initiative, and hope to be able to supply fruit for the children as and when we can.”
The council planning officer who was responsible for granting permission for the use of the site was familiar with the problems that had gone before, having also given permission to the two previous occupiers. “He was amazed at the work we had put into the pre-planning permission process, and said it had been unexpectedly smooth,” says Baker.
For anyone driving through the village, it will become apparent that Utopia Prepared has at the very least tidied up a tatty old building and removed a derelict blot from the landscape. Its resurrection as a factory will also bring money into the village, both for those employed within and those with their own commercial enterprises.
Project manager John Pendley has been working on the site since November, and showed FPJ the plans of the building as it previously was, before walking round the renovated area. “It was a rabbit warren of a place,” he says, “with rooms of all different shapes and sizes. But we have turned it around pretty quickly, and will install state-of-the-art equipment that will be almost at full capacity from day one. Only 18,000sqm will be used immediately, but the plans for phase two are ready to go, and we will see how quickly they come into play.
“The biggest challenge was refrigeration. There was a system already in place, but once we analysed it all, it became clear a lot of it was unusable, because pipes had been cut and exposed to the atmosphere. We expected the site to be fully plumbed up, but it wasn’t, and we had to change our plans a bit to accommodate that.”
Buzzing
It has been a busy time, then, and the work that has gone into this project even before it sees the real light of day has had an effect on existing staff, says Ball. Staff morale at Utopia as a whole is “buzzing”, he claims, adding: “There has been a lot of negativity in the industry lately, and our staff are not immune to it. They have friends working in other companies in the area too, and it’s a difficult time. But they can see where we are heading, that we are committed to growing the business, and they have been very encouraged by that.
“We are realising our full potential now. This has been a very good company for years, but our strategies are coming to fruition, and I think people will begin to see us a threat now.”
Van Lier agrees, saying: “We have often toyed with the blockages in our business, such as crop shortages, procurement issues and scale, but until recently, we perhaps never had a co-ordinated plan to put all of these things in order.
“We are certainly not arrogant about this; we know we will get a few things wrong along the way, but we are confident that we have the team and the processes in place to ensure that we don’t repeat any of those mistakes.”
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