Royal ascent

Pepé Gandia did not plan to end up in horticulture, despite his family’s deep-rooted traditions in the production industry. But having taken on the family business on leaving university in his mid 20s, he has not looked back. He has spent the time since developing an ideal that sets his company apart from the crowd of fresh fruit and asparagus producers - now he wants the rest of the world to sit up and take notice.

FPJ was in Seville last week to look at some of Royal’s 1,200 hectares of stonefruit orchards. The company will produce more than 30,000 tonnes of stonefruit in 2006, continuing a recent growth spurt. However, a constant desire to renew and replace varieties means that the Royal orchards will never look the same from one year to the next.

Partnership arrangements with breeding programmes around the world as well as its own internal programme throw up an enormous number of potential strains each year. And those selected to be taken further by Gandia and his technical team, headed up by daughter Laura, are already being targeted in their minds at one of three consumer segments, labelled by Gandia as “foodies”, “kids” and “the health conscious”. He says: “The success [of future stonefruit varieties] will be determined by flavour. At the moment, there is an emphasis on size, but I believe we are moving more into taste being the main differentiator.

“It’s amazing how consumer tastes can vary. One person might like a really crunchy fruit, while the next will want a soft type; one might want a sweet taste, while another only likes the more acidic varieties. It is impossible to generalise and we want the industry to be catering for all tastes.

“Our philosophy is that we do not intend to provide just niche ideas for niche markets, but products for a consumer that is becoming more and more demanding. Tastes are changing rapidly and the challenge for us is to deliver the fruit consumers want as quickly as possible to the shelves.

“If you put a lot of consistent products on the shelves, you can build a nice experience for consumers. But there has to be a good rotation in-store. And there are opportunities with all groups of consumers too. I believe that nothing is for ever and nothing is for everyone. We are not just aiming at the high-income earners, but also at the low-income groups who from time to time will want to trade up and buy a better quality of fruit.”

Royal picks as late as possible and, unusually, pickers place the fruit into single layer trays in the orchard, rather than into bulk bins. Another sign of the company’s eye on quality rather than speed is that it picks each orchard seven or eight times during each season, as opposed to the normal three-pick strategy of its stonefruit counterparts. “That obviously has an implication on picking costs, as we have to put a lot more people through the orchards,” says Gandia, who estimates that his costs are 140 per cent (or seven euro cents) a lb higher than his competitors.

It is a good investment though and makes all the difference, he adds. “Some exporters will pick fruit simply because the colour is “good enough”, but that can give you a diversity of pressures and sugar:acid ratios. But especially earlier in the season the level of attention to detail we are committed to offers guarantees over the uniformity of the fruit, and its performance on-shelf will be far better.

“Whereas labour costs were fairly low in Spain for many years, now they are high. But we are very lucky in this region to have a lot of people who have worked in horticulture for a long time. There is a tradition still in Seville for working in the fields and our workers are very skilful and understand the fruit.”

Around 40 per cent of Royal’s stonefruit orchards are filled with young trees being prepared to replace older trees. “The average age of our trees is just seven years, which is a real point of difference for us in this sector. We replace them rapidly as soon as we see a new variety that is better suited to the market,” says Gandia. “Occasionally we graft, but only when trees are really young. On the third leaf we are at 70 per cent of production, so there is no real need to graft. We replant 25 per cent of our area every year - 10-15 per cent of which will be replacing older trees and 10-15 per cent is new-farm expansion. As a company we are expanding at 15 per cent a year. A big proportion of that growth therefore is down to new trees.”

Around 1,500 varieties are being trialled at any one time and as few as five will make it through the process each year.

This season has been tough for stonefruit in general, but Gandia has had a very pleasing early-season run with German discounter Plus. Contrary to popular opinion in the UK, German consumer’s have shown their willingness to buy good quality fruit, and to pay the going rate for it. “We sold 15 trucks of fruit into Plus in the first week of the season at €2.8 a box ex-farmgate,” says Gandia. “In comparison, we sold a few pallets to the UK, for which our fruit was supposedly too expensive. That has continued as we have established a market. This week, we will have sent 25 trucks to Plus and they have taken the decision to only stock our stonefruit. By educating their customers about the consistency of the offer, they have been able to sell everything. Our one German client has bought three times more this season than our four UK customers put together.

“In the UK, category managers can be buying from 20 different growers, which creates a patchwork of fruit on the shelves. We don’t want to be part of that and feel it is very difficult for us to do a good job alongside 20 growers who do not do things in the way we do. It makes it much harder for the consumer to find continuity on shelf.”

What Gandia is looking for is exclusive relationships with his customers. “In time, we want to have partnerships with retailers who are committed to our fruit,” he says. Gandia adds that, to date, he does not consider any of his UK customers to be “strategic partners”, as he believes to make a difference on-shelf with any retailer, Royal must be responsible for at least 50 per cent of a specific fruit on-shelf during its season.

“Plus have learnt that we deliver better taste on average than our competitors and through our season they buy 100 per cent of their stonefruit from us.” After buying small fruit from Royal for €2.80 in the first week of the season, Plus came back the next week and offered €1.80 for larger sizes. “We said no, but after a week without our fruit, when sales dropped significantly, they came back and offered €2.30,” says Gandia.

“It has been a tough season so far, but we are pleased because we have done pretty well. Our customers who understand what we are trying to achieve have gone with us and that is encouraging.

“It takes a lot for any company to organise itself to deliver on this basis. If there is any technical guy at any supermarket that does not understand our philosophy and values, then we cannot work with them. Once the consumer is aware of the quality of our fruit, they will look everywhere for it, but it takes time.”

The UK market has not been receptive of sub-acidic varieties traditionally, but that is changing. “A lot of white-fleshed varieties really need to have high sugars to eat well and some of the older varieties [that have been the norm in the UK] have been quite bland. I think our work on new varieties is changing perceptions.”

To illustrate the point, Gandia cut open a sample of Silver Delice straight off the tree, which registered an incredible 25.5 brix. “This is the best nectarine we have this week,” he says, “but it might not be next week. You have to have a standard to give you continuity, but although the brix reading gives you a certain guarantee on taste, it’s not the bible. The acidic compound is also very important. If it eats well, the sugar level does not necessarily matter and we have varieties that never register above 11 brix that are very refreshing and have tremendous aroma.”

He also challenges another commonly held misconception, this time from consumers. “Most consumers will only go for the fruit with no marks, but the best-eating fruit often has sugar spots. I am against the concept of producing picture-perfect fruit.

“We will drive our supermarket customers to concentrate their efforts on the types of fruit we are producing - that’s the way to build consumption. Fruit we produce might fit into the specifications of our customers, but if it is not what we want to grow, we’ll replace it. Our vision is to supply fruit into the premium ranges and only that, so that we can fulfil our objective of satisfying consumers.”

Purchasing trends have changed, Gandia points out. “Consumers used to buy fruit every day or two days, now they buy it once a week. But they still want to have the same offer on-shelf in local stores whenever they go in. The hard work has to be put in at source to give consumers what they want.

“Nostalgia plays a huge part, many people think fruit used to taste better. But, there has been an evolution of the palate and our capacity to taste things is, in my opinion, totally different. We are exposed to far more food experiences and so many different tastes. So we believe we are more discerning and are far more demanding than we used to be. UK consumers have inherited the ‘buy with your eyes’ culture from the US. What we want is for consumers to buy into the fruit, the culture behind its production and the people.”

The next step for Royal is to develop its organic programme. Gandia says this will give opportunities for fruit that is seen as ugly to come to the fore. “There are lots of varieties that have missed selection because they are not aesthetically pleasing, but offer a dream eating experience. We don’t see organics as simply a way of improving food security, but as a way of bringing back varieties that have been ignored before.”

GANDIA PLUOTS NEW COURSE

Royal is producing a variety of pluot - the plum/apricot cross - with a deep red flesh. Gandia says the Spanish and export markets are “going crazy” for the fruit, which is the first plum available in the market, picked one week before Red Beaut.

“This is a real category killer,” he says. “It is a sweet-tasting, juicy variety, with more antioxidants than most varieties of blueberry and 1,000 times more than a normal plum. It also has a very distinct aroma - it’s a fantastic tool for improving the health of consumers. At the moment it is a little over-ripe for UK market specifications, but it has enormous potential.”

Pluots are not an easy crop to grow, as there can be big swings from one day to the next. “The difficulty is getting the fruit onto shelves,” says Gandia, “but once it is there, it sells very well. We are getting €3.20 a kilo ex-farm at the moment and we need those prices. From a normal financial point of view it might not be a viable crop for many farmers, but for us it is opening the way to a new concept.”