PrepWorld riding a wave amid fresh-cut sales boom

It’s fair to say prepared fruit has been on a rollercoaster ride in recent years, with the sector bouncing back from a perfect storm of challenges a few years ago to record 33 per cent market growth in the past two.

The sector’s struggles made headlines when in January 2023 major supplier Orchard House Foods entered administration, battered by the combined challenges of Brexit, Covid, labour shortages, higher energy prices, and transport strikes. It prompted industry figures to call for higher prices and fairer margins amid fears of further casualties in the sector.

As it turned out, the other major players in fresh-cut fruit have recovered admirably from the huge hit they suffered during Covid lockdowns when workers and travellers stopped picking up those convenient little pots of fruit. And although the demise of Orchard House left a big hole in the manufacturing capacity for prepared fruit, that gap was soon plugged, and then some, by the likes of PrepWorld, Blue Skies, Bakkavor and Del Monte UK.

Riding a wave

Ben Olins, the CEO of PrepWorld, now the UK’s largest manufacturer of prepared fruit, is full of excitement and optimism about the sector’s potential. And it would seem his business is riding a wave at the moment as it continues to invest heavily in its facilities and staff, grow sales, and now expand into Europe. More on that later.

“The sector’s in good health and has seen really significant growth over the last two years,” says Olins. “It has been one of the top-five fastest-growing sectors in all of grocery retail in the last year. And I think there are two main factors behind the sector’s recent success: offering a really good product that fits a number of shopper needs (health, convenience, taste etc), and being dynamic, flexible and efficient enough to weather all of the challenges it has faced and ensure consistent, high-quality supply.”

‘A manufacturing business’

This is no mean feat, especially when you consider that PrepWorld supplies over 30 different fruits, having to ensure year-round availability across wide-ranging categories at the right quality, with no flexibility from retail customers to substitute ingredients when supply is disrupted.

Olins stresses that assuming fresh-cut fruit is simply an extension of wholehead fresh produce is a mistake – and where many suppliers have gone wrong. “Prepared fruit is fundamentally a manufacturing and FMCG business,” he says. “You’re providing a manufactured, consistent product to consumers. And that mission defines your customer relationships, the production process, and how you think about procurement.”

Sucked into produce

In this regard, Olins’ route into the industry was fitting. After leaving university, he joined the business consultancy Accenture, working with a raft of major players in retail and FMCG, including Unilever, Cadbury, Schweppes, Diageo, and Sainsbury’s – who he worked with for three years focusing on improving their point-of-sale systems, store replenishment, and national forecasting.

“I came into the fresh produce sector with a really good understanding of how retailers and FMCG companies operate,” Olins says. “It’s different to how fresh produce businesses work, but not so different to PrepWorld.”

It is no secret that the PrepWorld boss hails from an important and influential fresh produce family. Indeed, five other members of the Olins clan have worked, or are still working, in the upper echelons of the fruit industry. And it wasn’t long before Ben joined the gang, joking that he didn’t plan to but rather got “sucked in”.

During his first five years in fresh produce, Olins worked in PrepWorld’s parent companies, Poupart and BerryWorld, setting up an internal consultancy that looked at a range of internal business challenges and opportunities, mainly around how to internationalise and how to support the companies’ growth.

Prepared fruit was a major growth area, and Ben was heavily involved in the formation of PrepWorld from a consultancy perspective. He was then chosen to head up the business when it was created as a standalone entity in 2012.

“The early years of PrepWorld were really defining because when you’re working in a start-up, you’re having to learn everything from scratch,” he says. “There were no rule books or guidebooks, but it’s a really valuable challenge because it gets you engaged with every single problem and every aspect of the business. I also realised what I’m good at and what I’m not. And I was very happy to build a team of specialists to take on some of those roles.”

New horizons

Since that time, PrepWorld has had some major milestones, not least its move to a bigger site in Northfleet, Kent, in 2022 to coincide with its 10th anniversary and allow the business to significantly increase production and expand its product range.

Two years later, AgroBerries acquired BerryWorld Group to creates the second-largest berry company in the world, with an annual output of 150,000 tonnes and over 3,000ha of owned production. And in January this year, PrepWorld announced a new joint venture called PrepWorld France with tropical and exotic fresh produce specialist Omer-Decugis & Cie.

“The acquisition by AgroBerries is really important at a time of growing consolidation and complexity in the industry because it offers huge geographic scale in terms of production, brings together a world-class portfolio of berry genetics, and offers stability and a great investment runway,” Olins says.

There is no doubt that this is a time of growth, ambition and evolution at both PrepWorld and the wider BerryWorld Group. And with his consultancy background and passion for delivering change, you wouldn’t bet against Olins making every success of the fresh-cut fruit supplier’s future.