Former commercial director at Mack, Janina Dowding, will head up the brand new subsidiary Total Stonefruit, FPJ has learnt. The group is a new arm for the Total Worldfresh group of companies, adding to existing subsidiarys such as Total Cherry and Total Exotics. The specialised team is a significant move for Total, and signals the company’s ambitious plans for the European stonefruit market.
Jon Clark, commercial director at Total Cherry said he has supervised the new stonefruit business over the last few months to get it started, before Dowding took over management. “As a business, Total Worldfresh is looking to build a strong stonefruit business alongside our established berry and cherry businesses,” he explains. “We are delighted to recently have Janina Dowding join the company to develop the area of stonefruit excluding cherries.”
Commercial teams are based in Kent and Spalding, while finance and administration is done from Surrey.
Although Clark won’t comment on which growing regions Total Stonefruit will be looking at, he confirms: “We are constantly looking at developing existing and introducing new sources where there is a benefit for all.” A company document outlining the proposals for Total Stonefruit revealed that it has “ambitious plans for the European stonefruit market” and suggested it has already communicated with “key strategic growers in Europe”.
Clark said at the moment Dowding’s appointment is the beginning of a team that will be built around her, while the company statement emphasised the potential for more key personnel to follow. It said that Total Stonefruit aims to create an “industry-leading team to drive the stonefruit category”.
Dowding joined Mack in 1998 and became commercial director for stonefruit in 2008, adding to her previous responsibilities for grapes and melons.
Outlining plans for product development, the statement said Total Stonefruit will focus on ‘Ripe and Ready’ concepts as a value driver in increasingly customer-orientated marketing and NPD. And it reasserted Total’s ongoing drive for European market dominance across the category, by noting “benefits of scale and purchasing power” and a capacity to “seize opportunities”. “With our strengths in the Scandanavian and UK market the opportunity exists to align these strengths with other European markets,” it added.
Commenting on Total Produce’s increased investment in its vegetable and soft-fruit businesses, one industry source with close links to the company previously told Eurofruit: 'I think we're going to see Total Produce developing in this kind of area much more in the future as it looks to apply the skills it has built up in mainstream fresh produce to more specialist niches.'
Total Produce’s revenue has seen steady yet continued growth, allowing such specialisation to take place, as last month it reported that group revenue for the year rose by 13 per cent to €3.2billion (around £2.6 bn), while adjusted pre-tax profits increased by 12.5 per cent to €52.9 million (around £43.6m).
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