What do you see as the key challenges facing the business this year?
Not necessarily in the correct order, but currency exchange, rising costs - particularly fuel - the water situation, getting the right returns to growers and labour costs.
What does a fresh produce company have to do to succeed in the current difficult economic marketplace?
I can only speak for Agrexco, but looking at it objectively, to succeed you need the right product, at the right price and at the right time to suit. However, this comes at a huge internal cost. Our success is down to our strengths achieved by the investments we have made. Customers want reliability. They want continuity of supply. They want good quality product. They want service. We cannot compete with product from Europe, so we concentrate on the more specialist varieties with emphasis on taste and quality. The partnerships we have formed with countries such as Peru, Brazil and Ethiopia allows us to deliver an almost 52 week supply of certain products at the same level of quality.
Another of our company strengths is reflected in our marketing desk, also known as the problem-solving team. In this industry, so much depends on the weather. If it is a bad year, it will show in the size, quality and availability of produce and ultimately affect our growers and customers alike. We find solutions. Our wholesale desk gives us the advantage of distributing surplus quantities to various channels such as food processing, catering and juicing without a loss to our growers.
Do you have any new product development you can tell us about?
The Evergreen pepper - a green variety that remains green and does not turn red - is new. Agrexco has total exclusivity for this product. This variety also has the advantage of having better eating quality and it can be seafreighted without any loss of colour or taste. On stonefruit, we have been developing red-fleshed nectarines and improving Aromacots. For strawberries, Orly is a variety exclusive to us through our partnership with Fertiseeds. The fruit is of exceptionally good quality, medium-sized, with good colour and a high brix level.
What is Agrexco doing to improve its environmental footprint?
It’s more a question of what are we not doing! We cannot stress enough how important our purpose-built vessels are and how much they have contributed to reducing our carbon footprint. We now bring in 90 per cent of product by seafreight. They run on low sulfur fuels, emitting less pollutants. They are back loaders, so we do not waste resources by sailing with empty loads. The cooling rooms are fully packed with pallets so that 25 per cent less energy is consumed than on other reefer containers. Our packaging has changed. We have done away with the bleaching process on our carton liners so they can be designated ‘green’. With our retail packaging we have cut down our use of materials by 48 per cent over the last 11 years and by using standardised environmental and recycled packaging, we have saved 20 per cent of our packaging output.
Internally, all our offices operate similarly. We consume less electricity, our storage cooling house area is now solar powered and we reduce our paper trail by only printing when necessary.
Have you made any other recent company investments and do you have any more coming up?
We are building a new warehouse at the port of Sette, France, which will have sophisticated computerised systems. It will reduce inland transportation and fuel costs, seafreight being cheaper than overland transportation.
Are you concerned by the fierce supermarket price war that is taking place at present?
Yes, I am concerned. Growers are currently working below cost production and if this continues, it could result in empty shelves. They need the returns to be able to continue production.
What are your thoughts on supermarket direct sourcing? Is this a threat or an opportunity for companies like Agrexco?
The trend is clear. As Agrexco is a grower co-operative, we join in, as it were. However, there are products that need the added value of category managers such as ripening the product and so on and so forth.
What are your hopes for the new year?
On a commercial level, I hope that the economic situation takes an upturn and we can look forward to a brighter, more successful 2011. On a personal front, I can only wish for a healthy and peaceful year.
No comments yet