UK multiple retailers still have the capacity to increase sales of home-grown strawberries by 10 per cent a year, as well as expanding consumption of raspberries, blueberries and even blackberries.
This confident message came from major marketing groups addressing the annual soft-fruit industry conference held at Ashford this week.
The marketing desks combined under the British Summer Fruits (BSF) banner to review a season, which despite being in sharp contrast to the long, hot summer of 2003, produced respectable results for UK growers and customers.
Variable crop performance and prices did not stop retailers Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose improving their overall performance. Asda and Morrisons, were said to have room for improvement on their 2004 showing.
Comparative weekly figures are collated by BSF and sent to all retailers. Chairman Laurence Olins believes that this year’s category growth has been at least in part due to a £150,000 promotional campaign which regularly attracted national media headlines throughout the season, helping transform soft fruit from a perceived luxury product to one which is being purchased and consumed more often.
BSF has also been on hand to give an industry stance on a series of potentially damaging scare stories, ranging from the use of methyl bromide and polytunnels, to labour shortages and wage reviews.
Part of the BSF role, said Olins, is to help shed the image of strawberry growers in particular as part of an uncaring, greedy agribusiness, which is interested only in profit. “[This year] has shown we can’t sit idly by. Negative events have been met with a robust response,” he said.
Demand has increased strawberry production substantially. Everbearer volumes were up by 40 per cent, according to Nick Marston, managing director of KG Fruit.
Spring glasshouse production however did not rise at the same rate, although volumes have increased slightly from 37,000 tonnes in 2002 to 44,900t this year. “We are going the right way,” said Marston. “There have been substantial increases in market penetration, and price offers are bringing in new customers.”
The season brought good news for raspberry growers, but Lochy Porter, md of Angus Soft Fruit, believes that more should be done to iron out peaks, which last July left 100t of the fruit unsold. The counterbalance was that many multiples gave more shelf presence to raspberries, and at some points of the season, sales of British and imported fruit increased by between 43 and 150 per cent year-on-year.
Porter said better planning and understanding of the market by growers could enable them to take advantage of missed opportunities that still exist for raspberries in the UK marketplace.
On the import front, the market for blueberries in the UK continues to expand impressively, and domestic production is also on the rise. Adam Olins, managing director of BerryWorld, estimated that annual sales have risen in two years from £6.6 million to £16.7m. This year alone, retail sales have increased by 53 per cent because of greater consistency in quality, storage and promotional initiatives, he said.
Seasonal gaps in April and May are being closed, but Olins wondered how UK growers will fare when competition from Eastern Europe picks up.
No comments yet