The restructuring of Sainsbury’s supply chain dealt the company a serious blow, leaving it out in the cold with one of its major customers, but Maxwell, WWF’s marketing director, says it has kept a foot in the door, even though more out of necessity than desire.
“We lost Sainsbury’s business for southern hemisphere fruit, but we’re still supplying them with English.” That is primarily down to the business’s strength on the English crop. “We’ve got 45 per cent of the English top-fruit crop,” says Maxwell.
But while Sainsbury’s are still using WWF for UK fruit, he would rather it was for different motives. “We want people to want us, not need us. We’ve got the best growers, the best operations, and I don’t think it’s arrogant to think that. We want to be our customers’ first choice.”
The loss of the Sainsbury’s business did have a serious impact on the business, he admits, “We had to lose 50 people,” and it was a significant loss of turnover, to the tune of £20 million
However, WWF is far from down and out. “We’ve still got a turnover of more than £100m. Sainsbury’s was our biggest customer, but since then we’ve increased our business with other customers, and that’s in recognition that we deliver.”
While they might have lost £20m with the Sainsbury’s account, Maxwell estimates they have managed to generate a further £10m of business elsewhere. All in all, it has been a good year, he says, and the door is far from closed Sainsbury’s either, but that’s for the future, and for the moment, the company is more interested in focusing on the here and now.
“What we need to concentrate on is how we are making sure the customers we have now are happy and successful. It’s about service levels, quality, support and working with them to make sure people are buying and eating more apples.”
While other businesses in the industry are beginning to narrow their focus onto two or even one customer, Maxwell cannot see the same happening with WWF. “When you’re only focussing on one operation you lose awareness and knowledge of what’s going on elsewhere. In produce you’ve got to be on your toes, as opportunities come and go.”
Not that the business lacks focus, instead it has dedicated customer focussed teams, with broader expertise and knowledge to back that up.
“You need to have size to put investment in but you still need the straight lines so you can focus on individual customers and their needs,” he adds.
Away from the retail arena, the company is a big supporter of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme and Robert Balicki, chairman of WWF, is keen to see it expanded even further.
“We think it should be taken all the way up to 11-year-olds. Four to six is great, but you’re just getting them used to eating it, then you switch it off. It’s not long enough for them to develop a taste for it.”
The business is pushing the government to roll the scheme out further and Balicki says the industry will rise to the challenge. “At the moment SFVS takes 40 per cent of the English crop, and we provide around 28m pieces of fruit during the English season. We’re urging them to expand it and if they did, we could grow for it, and we could lower the costs through increased volume.”
While the SFVS is a major focus for the company, another area creating extreme interest, particularly with Maxwell, is the new Jazz apple variety.
He says in a market as mature as apples, it takes time for things to change: “The sector is all about evolution, not revolution. In a mature market, revolution doesn’t happen, but you have to be ready for it when opportunity comes.
“We try new stuff all the time, we’re always looking for the silver bullet, but that only really happens once every 10 years. Just now, we’re thinking it’s going to be Jazz.”
The New Zealand bred apple is being trialled by WWF on two sites of 1,000 trees this year. “We’re just learning how to grow them, we’re trying different methods, planting some closer together, trying out different pruning techniques,” Maxwell says.
However, while the operation has been fairly low-scale so far, that’s soon about to change, says Balicki: “At the moment, we’re taking the opportunity to play around with it, to get to know the variety, but this winter we’ll be planting 215,000 trees.”
The business is certainly nailing its colours to the mast with Jazz, but while Maxwell admits developing new apple varieties is a gamble, he is confident Jazz will be a hit.
“Every year we’re planting new varieties, but there’s not going to be many that are real winners. Produce has to deliver something that’s definitely different to what’s available. We’re looking for a major step change, there’s too much investment for just a slight improvement.
“You have to ask the question is it different enough, and in the case of Jazz, yes, we think it is.”
He says the key to his confidence in Jazz is its consistency: “For something to work it has to be global. You have to have 52-week supply and during that 52 weeks you have to deliver a great product.
“We don’t want something that for 10 weeks it is great, 10 weeks bad and 32 weeks ok. It has to be good all the time and Jazz has great flavour and is consistently great.
“Its real strength is that it doesn’t disappoint, that’s why we talk about it like a brand, it’s like a Mars bar, it tastes the same every time.”
But while there is reason to be cheerful, Maxwell points out that the pressures remain. “The downside is that costs are going up and prices are going down. You only have to look at wages and oil, there’s been massive growth there.”
Despite the resilience of the apple industry, the situation is unsustainable if the present climate is maintained. “We have a strong industry, but it can’t afford too many kicks. If you don’t have enough money to re-invest, then the industry will fall over,” Maxwell warns.
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