eFreshportal.com, the internet facility which bought out HairyApe earlier this year, is introducing a new concept in produce trading with the launch of Get Clearing - a clearing house, where buyers can source produce from international suppliers with secure buying and logistics solutions.
Get Clearing will be rolled out to all sections of the website - meat, fish, flowers and plants as well as fruit and vegetables - from November 1.
Since buying HairyApe from Martin Clifford in June, Global E-Trading, the company behind eFreshportal has been consulting with the former owner to develop the site.
Hans Robbens, ceo of Global E-Trading, said: “It has become much more than Hairy Ape, which was a reference site. Now it is a live trading site with references.
“If you want to buy directly from a supplier you need to have secure payments and logistics solutions to be sure that the goods will get there and with this clearing house, buyers will have that.”
Robbens, pictured above, said the portal would provide an ideal method for lesser-known suppliers to gain good publicity.
“Any buyer will have access for free and suppliers will pay a small fee to display their produce. We have suppliers as far as New Zealand and Thailand wanting to use it and buyers are saying ‘I never knew there were so many suppliers out there’,” he told FPJ.
Robbens said the clearing house is the obvious solution in today’s marketing conditions. “These days buyers want to go direct and cut out the middleman. International communication makes it easy to purchase products. The world has become a marketplace where the only thing missing is an information system which tells people who has what available and for what price,” he said.
According to Robbens, the company started just one year ago, focused solely on flowers and plants but the transition to other fresh products followed soon after.
He said: “The portal for flowers was a huge success and then some of the big retailers said it would be great to have the same facility for fruit and veg. Within two months we had introduced fruit, veg, meat and fish and developed the site from there. Our strategy is to buy out other portals and Hairy Ape was one of the ones we chose.”
Clifford said parting with the project was not easy but the opportunity was one he couldn’t afford to miss. He said: “I had stuck with it for nearly six years. The internet is a big step for some in this trade but people were beginning to use the site more and more but it was too good a chance to miss to be part of something bigger.”
Clifford said progress on the fresh produce side of the eFreshportal site has not developed as fast as others but he is hopeful it will catch up before long.
“Fruit and veg doesn’t seem to have been their first priority but they have got more people working on it now. The site wasn’t quite right but it will be altered in the next few weeks and if it all goes to plan I think the trade will find it very useful.
“Each sector is very different and the company has learned that one size definitely doesn’t fit all but when it’s finished it will enable growers to get firm prices for their produce as much as 12 months in advance which will enable them to plan what they need to grow like never before.”
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