The UK stonefruit category is static and, with that, reflective. With sales of just over £350 million at retail level and figures from Kantar Worldpanel showing a 0.1 per cent decline in value and a 0.5 per cent fall in volume, stonefruit insiders can’t help looking at the soaring soft-fruit business and hoping to replicate the winning formula.
Dwarfing the stonefruit sector in UK supermarkets, soft fruit stands at more than double the financial worth and is on a very steady and substantial increase year on year. So what’s the difference?
“The key is around delivering consistency to the consumer,” says one supplier. “And this can be variable in stonefruit from time to time. “We need a share of the voice. There has been a significant increase in soft fruit over the last 15 years, with a high level of varietal development and a clear voice pushing the category’s consistency and quality to drive consumption. It’s also a very good offer and the British season is available from now to September. It commands retailers and it’s really hard to compete.”
Cherries and nectarines are pushing the category in the right direction sales-wise, and plums are driving penetration. “People are switching from peaches [to nectarines], but there is also interest in them from new consumers,” says one source. “Cherries have seen growth and the Picota effect will have a large bearing on this. For one of the major retailers, sales of stalkless Picota cherries during the season represented almost half its entire cherry sales for the year.
“Recent and ongoing campaigns to promote stonefruit - such as UK plums, South African plums, peaches, nectarines and cherries and Spanish cherries - have combined to educate shoppers about the eating quality, seasons, varieties and uses of these fruits.”
Some feel that an inconsistency across other stonefruit from differing sources, mainly caused by problematic weather conditions, is letting the entire sector down.
“We need an iconic anchor variety in the sector that can’t be knocked,” says the supplier. “We need to collaborate across the categories to sell more fruit, but as an industry we are very poor at doing that.”
Retailers moved promotions around a little this quarter, which may explain the slight decline in sales, but insiders are mostly blaming recessional worries.
“People are still shopping on a budget,” says one supplier. “Through a recession, you have got to deliver a good flavour to the consumer and also make sure you’re not going to add to their wastage. Smaller pack sizes have been used because of this.”
As the southern hemisphere campaign comes to an end and the northern offer starts, there will inevitably be availability issues over the next couple of weeks.
In addition to this normal state of short supply, reports coming in from Murcia and Andalusia suggest further problems brought by adverse weather conditions, with the former having damage across peach, nectarine and apricot crops and in the latter drought and frost has hit.
“The southern hemisphere season was difficult because of growing conditions and now we are airfreighting product from Egypt,” says one importer. “Demand is up, so prices are very high. People are still buying them, but this is more to do with the promotions on than consumers making sure they buy the fruit.”
Morrisons has been particularly supportive of the South African stonefruit campaign, says one source. “Last season it was presented with the industry’s first-ever Stone Fruit Retailer of the Year award for its efforts to get people eating plums, peaches and nectarines during the British winter and double-digit growth in the category for at least two years running,” he explains.
But the overall message is that quality needs to improve. “It’s obvious that the big challenge ahead is delivering a consistent offer,” says one supplier. “Consumers have to trust us.” -
POUPART'S CSR PLEDGE
The Poupart Group, which specialises in a wide range of crops from stonefruit and cherries to soft fruit, top fruit and citrus, has unveiled a new corporate social responsibility strategy this month. Michael Barker finds out more
orporate social responsibility has rarely been higher up the agenda, and with supermarkets putting greater scrutiny on the supply base, companies are moving to underline the work they are doing to protect staff, growers, the environment and the local community.
This month Poupart Group, one of the largest UK suppliers of a full range of home-grown and imported fresh produce, published its own CSR document, in which it details four ‘pillars’ of activity through which it aims to “meet or exceed the ethical, legal and commercial expectations that society has of business.” The initiative is being led by company chairman Laurence Olins, supported by a dedicated CSR committee recruited from across the
Poupart Group.
The four sections consist of an Education Pillar, Environment Pillar, Supply Chain Pillar and Community Pillar, with each co-ordinated by a different staff member or committee representative.
As part of the Education Pillar, a series of ‘well-being’ initiatives are being rolled out across the group. These consist of lunchtime talks held at the offices in Turnford, Colchester and Canterbury, with staff invited to listen to experts discuss issues related to personal matters. The first of these talks, which Poupart has branded ‘Mid-day Matters’, will put a focus on health and nutrition and is expected to take place in June.
In the Supply Chain Pillar, the company is focusing on how the group manages its output into the environment, with particular attention being paid to its carbon footprint. With more than 400 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year of that footprint contributed by employee car usage and flights, the company is encouraging staff to car share. It also aims to step up the level of recycling taking place across its various sites and identify best practice to encourage reductions in usage. Already 80 per cent of paper bought at Turnford Place is recycled.
The subject of water is high up the agenda in the Environment Pillar. Poupart is in discussion with East Malling Research about the possibility of an irrigation project to promote best practice and reduce water fertiliser and pesticide usage, as well as reduce wastage and lower the carbon footprint, enhance yields, improve soil structure and save time.
Based at the Concept Orchard at Rankins Farm in Kent, the project will study the scheduling of irrigation, regulated deficit irrigation, the scheduling of irrigation with compost mulch and regulated deficit irrigation with compost mulch.
Finally the Community Pillar sees a number of initiatives encouraging interaction with the local community. A “strawberry-growing challenge” sees strawberry plants and growing kits donated to nine local schools to encourage the teaching of healthy eating to schoolchildren, while a Poupart staff cricket team will take on a young disabled children’s side for a charity match. -
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