The British Herb Trade Association (BHTA) reports that its membership now represents some 90 per cent of herbs sold through the retail trade and that it is operating in a growth market where herbs are more popular than ever. “Data is mixed, but [year on year] value is up about 14 per cent and volume around 11 per cent,” says Mat Prestwich, chairman of the association and managing partner at R&G Fresh Herb Solutions. “The issue is retail price - a lot of the retailers have increased weight of unit and price accordingly.”
The top six in the UK remain unchanged in the last 12 months and are still coriander, basil, parsley - both flat and curly - mint and chives. The first four of these account for 56 per cent of total sales in value and unit sales. “But there are herbs out there that simply aren’t being given the credit they deserve,” says Prestwich. “Traditional English varieties such as rosemary, thyme, sage and bay leaves are still selling well in terms of growth but nothing compared to the likes of coriander. It is all about versatility and these herbs have traditional uses so it is more difficult to get creative if you associate a herb with a particular food or meal, for example rosemary and lamb. And we are finding that the lesser known varieties are struggling to come out of the shadow of the top six…there are so many herbs out there but we can’t flood the market with these until we know for sure the public will understand how to use them.”
At Arava - an Israeli grower and exporter with its own UK office - David Crossland reports that the top-sellers list is unchanged in terms of products over the last decade. “Other new varieties and types have not really captured the imagination and the number-one sellers are still the number-one sellers despite various promotions,” says Crossland. “What we are seeing is greater demand for more different specifications. We supply 32 different varieties of cut herb in different specifications from bunched, loose and bagged in all different sizes and lengths of cut. There is definitely more demand for more specifications that are closer to the finished product and now nearly all of this can be done by the growers themselves. For example, we are supplying a lot of product that is just individual leaves for food processors to use as garnish.”
Fellow Israeli exporter Agrexco is a massive player in the UK herb market with 35 different standard herb lines on offer. But its focus is shifting away from dependence on some of the commodity lines to some of the new and speciality types Prestwich refers to. “The UK market is still growing but we face competition,” explains Mike Caddy. “The big threat used to be from Spain but it is now moving to Morocco. Many of the lines have become commodities and their value has dropped as more players enter the marketplace. Israel can’t afford to be involved in that end of the market which is why we are looking at creating niches and innovating.”
To this end the UK office of Agrexco is working hard on generating interest for half-a-dozen new products. The first is samphire, which was introduced two years ago. Although it is a herb traditionally found in salt-water coastal marshes, it has not been produced on a commercial scale before. But Agrexco has worked on its development at the Ramat-Negev Desert Agriculture Research Centre as part of work to find products that could be grown in poor quality water. “They have taken a product that they knew thrived in salty conditions naturally and have managed to grow it 52 weeks of the year,” explains Caddy.
Unlike a seed-breeding company, as an exporter, Agrexco’s budget for promotion of new products is very limited. “We have mainly been promoting samphire and our other new lines by word of mouth,” says Caddy. “Samphire is traditionally associated with fish dishes, but it is easy to stir fry and is very nice with pasta or exotic vegetables or even as an alternative to mangetout or fine beans, so it fits a number of different uses.” Since the product was mentioned in the pages of FPJ last year, it has featured in a supermarket ready meal with baby asparagus and fish and Agrexco has been working with Fresh Direct’s new-product development team to get the product onto the menu of the Slug & Lettuce chain. “Slowly the uses are becoming wider,” says Caddy. “We have been pushing it for two years and it is only recently that we have started to see the benefits.” He firmly believes that the key is getting catering suppliers to sample products with their customers. “We were selling 10-15kg of samphire a week but now that has grown to 200kg,” he says.
The same research centre, a subsidiary of the world-famous Volcani Institute, has also been working on bringing another traditional coastal variety to commercial production with the introduction of sea orache, otherwise known as Atriplex. The product has a very small leaf and thrives in barren conditions. “We have really only just started with this one, but already we are seeing interest from a customer in New Covent Garden,” says Caddy. “We sent out samples five weeks ago and now we have one person ordering 10kg a week.”
Another line that Agrexco has been working on is nettles, in this case as well as sending samples to catering suppliers, it is also working with the Bakkavor group to assess potential in a prepared format. “As time goes by we are getting better at identifying the customers who are likely to try new products,” says Caddy. “It is important to talk to the innovators in a marketplace as they can often be influential in spreading the word.” The idea for marketing nettles came from just one individual grower in Israel with a very broad knowledge of herbs and he has now added the stinging plant to his portfolio.
Other new ranges adding spice to the Agrexco offer are flowering chives, chilli oregano and a new tarragon. “Sometimes people have reservations about a flowering variety as it needs to be treated carefully, but we have been asked for this product and there is growing interest.” The chilli oregano and tarragon have been developed with Hishtil Nurseries and appeared on Agrexco’s stand at the Fruit Logistica exhibition last month. “The oregano is a much hotter variety than ordinary oregano and was bred originally for the ornamental market before it was identified as having good potential for the cut sector,” says Caddy. “And the new tarragon has a broader leaf than standard types but is easier to produce during the shorter days of winter. They both have 12-month availability.”
Caddy believes that chilli oregano has great potential with pizza manufacturers and restaurant chains. “We consume so much pizza in the UK and this oregano has a great flavour,” he says. “And the Persian community eats tarragon in large quantities so we are talking to companies that do salad bowls about doing a Persian-type salad. UK consumers are very interested in salads and we hope eventually that they will pick it up. It is all about changing people’s eating habits.”
The last of the new products in the range Agrexco is pushing is mountain bush basil. It has a reddish leaf and travels very well and has been bred by another subsidiary of the Volcani Institute - the New-Yar Research Centre.
While Agrexco’s focus is on cut herbs, HumberVHB concentrates on potted herbs with basil by far the largest seller followed by coriander and parsley. Its biggest innovations in the past year have been introducing a seasonal Thai basil and growing mint from cuttings to produce a more mature, stronger flavoured mint.
“We try and source from the UK as much as possible,” explains the company’s product manager James Seymour. “But we also bring in product from Morocco, Israel and Spain.”
And Cyprus remains a very important source for the UK market in spite of the difficulty of water availability. “Our herb exports to the UK are expanding in spite of the difficulties we have,” says Ioannis Shekeris, commercial counsellor at the Cyprus Trade Centre in London. “This season there has been a real shortage of water and it has been a drought year. The UK is by far our most important market taking 95 per cent of export supplies. Coriander is a very big item, but also methi, or fenugreek, and parsley.” Last year, coriander sendings to the UK market reached some 3,149 tonnes of total exports to the UK of all Cypriot vegetables of 7,757t.
Major drivers for the growth in the herb market are celebrity chefs. “I don’t think anywhere else has the same range and depth of TV food programmes,” says Caddy. “And what people like Jamie Oliver have done for herbs is terrific. A lot of people are turning back to wanting good-quality ingredients. And now the opportunity is there for herbs to be more than just an ingredient. For example, we should be encouraging people to use basil as a salad item or to make their own pesto from scratch.”
Prestwich agrees that the chefs have helped bring about a real change in attitudes but also puts growth down to a willingness on the part of consumers to experiment. “It is this that I hope will trigger a surge in sales of the lesser used varieties such as sage, thyme rosemary and oregano,” he says. “Awareness and usage are my two real passions and getting the public educated in the wider uses of herbs is key to the development of the category.” Availability is also an important factor in pushing the sector forward: “It has to be in stock,” says Prestwich. “If it is not on sale, the disappointment factor is huge - there is no substitute for fresh herbs.”
And Seymour thinks the whole healthy-eating message is having a positive effect on his market. “Rather than salt, people are using fresh herbs to liven up their food and are adding flavour in that way. They are looking for simple recipes where each ingredient has an influence on the overall flavour. And by using fresh herbs they feel they are creating something. We find that certain customers tend to prefer cut herbs and others pots - it all comes down to how confident in the kitchen they are.”
HumberVHB’s introduction of Thai basil in a pot is also an interesting example of seeking new ways to grow a market. “We introduced it at the end of last summer and it was in store for two months,” explains Seymour. “What we are trying to do is create an artificial season to try to get a bit more interest in the category. It is difficult to assess but the product is great with Thai green curries and it has a distinctive aniseed flavour that traditionally the British palate does not really go for, but that is starting to change.” HumberVHB is also starting to create mixes in the cut arena such as an Italian mix and a fish mix.”
Caddy believes it is also important to bring new ideas forward, not just in terms of use, but also in presentation to increase the pick-up rate of herbs. Packaging innovations have allowed some herbs to break out of the cool chain and be brought onto the ambient shelves as understanding of respiration of the product and breathability of packaging have improved. Understanding consumer requirements for different lines and offering pack-weights accordingly is also an interesting concept and although not all supermarkets do it, Waitrose for example, does not have a standard cut-herb pack-weight but features different weights more in line with likely usage.
But Caddy warns that over-packaging could increasingly become an issue for environment-aware consumers. As is the whole debate surrounding food miles and airfreight. Agrexco is tackling it effectively having invested in its own boats so that many of its herbs are now shipped by sea to Marseilles before being trucked up through France to the UK. “We have been doing this for three-and-a-half years and slowly interest is tipping in our favour as people see seafreight as better for the environment than airfreight,” says Caddy. He also stresses that product quality does not suffer. “Shipping this way, there are fewer transit stations than if product is airfreighted,” he explains. “The transit time might be longer, but product quality is better as there is better control of the environment and the herbs are kept in better conditions.”
At Arava, Crossland believes we are at “the beginning of the beginning” in the whole environmental debate. “The food miles issue has not hit us yet, but we are looking at what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint,” says Crossland. “The big concern is the ignorance among the public and the use of aeroplane stickers to denote airfreighted product. What people don’t understand is that just because an exporter uses airfreight does not mean that the product will have a bigger carbon footprint. Everyone needs to look at what they are doing and try to do it better.”
Arava’s most recent production development sees the introduction of year-round cultivation of basil in the Dead Sea area. “It is warmer and drier there so it means that we can produce without the need to use heat and therefore that is a huge cost and environmental saving,” explains Crossland. “This year marks the first commercial venture with a five-hectare production unit. We can produce basil elsewhere in Israel, but we have really focused on closing that gap in January and February, which is the lowest period in the production cycle.”
From the outside, the herb sector appears surprisingly united and competition between potted and fresh-cut is apparently minimal. “Our competition is more from other ingredients and flavourings,” says Caddy, who is heavily involved in the BHTA. “We are all struggling with the limitation of pesticides and all looking to integrated crop management techniques so there is really more common ground than competition. We have also talked about the need for a generic campaign and are very happy to participate in that and there is evidence of how effectively it can be done as the “Yes Peas!” campaign illustrated. We have also seen how it has worked with mangoes: with a very small amount of funding and working jointly in the Mango Association we have managed to increase mango consumption considerably. I believe the same could happen with herbs if we limit the range we promote and target our market.”
And Prestwich reports that the BHTA’s marketing plan is nearing lift-off. “We are in negotiations with three PR/marketing companies with regard to an effective plan and with the membership with regards to the best way of funding it,” he says. “It will be substantial. It will be an ongoing exercise, not a one-year experiment. We need to secure members in order for us to drive the industry forward and we need to make sure that we provide benefit to members but, in turn, members must provide feedback and support to the industry.
“The real challenge is to maintain momentum and really bring herbs to the fore. Packaging, provenance, the environment, education and ethical trading are key to the success of the UK herb industry.”
CLIMATE RIGHT FOR MICROGREENS
HumberVHB and Westland Nurseries took the salad grower of the year award at last month’s grower of the year awards for their Microgreens product.
“Microgreens are young versions of salad leaves or herbs,” says HumberVHB product manager James Seymour. “They are grown to seedleaf or first true leaf size and are all exceptionally tender and intensely flavoured. Varieties are especially selected for their unique flavour or visual impact and colour and they add interest and curiosity to the plate and some are considered to be superfoods because they contain a higher concentration of phytochemicals per gram than that found in their mature versions. They are also consumed whole so there is little preparation and minimal waste.”
The lines in the HumberVHB range are green basil, Thai basil, red basil, pink-stemmed radish, red mustard frills, broccoli, red chard, mizuna and rocket.
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