Aussi “Sunshine Farm” mandarin
"From 'farm to table' key to brand power in China"
“Chinese consumers sometimes lack understanding about where their food comes from. People tend to think that produce originates from factories, not from farms. Therefore, educating the consumers about your products is very crucial if you want to convince these consumers your products are better than others.” With Lisa’s twenty years of experience exporting Australian perishable food including fresh produce, she understands what China consumers are like.
“In China, many business people do not necessarily want to ‘get their hands dirty' and fail to go down the origin to check the quality thoroughly. With food products, however, this is no easy business. You need to get down to where the product is grown and get your hands dirty to check that everything is in order to offer your consumers a product they can trust to eat."
Recently in China, some new entrants to the fruit industry were from other industries such as property development and export factory owners and those investors who switched their investment interest to agriculture and the fresh produce industry following the downturn of property and manufacturing markets.
"They are smart business people, but do not necessarily have enough experience in the fresh produce industry. We want to work with experienced people in the industry, that know the product well. However, I find that people with an agricultural background in China tend to focus on pricing too much. For example, regarding fresh fruit, they will be interested in the mandarins from South Africa because they are cheaper than those from Australia. However, there is big difference between the varieties and quality. In the past, cheap fresh produce coulld be sold easily and more expensive fruits needed intensive marketing. Therefore, some experienced fresh produce people in China tend to take the ‘easy approach’ of selling products based on low pricing. That’s the principle business activities of the fruit wholesale markets: focus on price rather than the quality."
Cold chain distribution
"For the first season in 2015, we have sent half of our crops branded as “Sunshine Farm” into the wholesale markets and the return to our farmer’s efforts is much lower than we expectated. The other half of our crops were sold through a large perishable online company in China, a number of premium supermarkets, such as Metro, and some Webchat shop distributors associations. We soon found the return directly to these markets turned out to be a lot higher and the brand power of Sunshine Farm took off quickly because of the good quality. We worked with these buyers to manage the supply chain well to maintain the mandarin quality all the way through till being delivered to the end consumers."
"End consumers were much more satisfied with the fresher fruit and appreciated the value for money. At the wholesale market, the fruit can be mishandled on the trading floor somehow by not being maintained in a temperature controlled environment at all times. The fruit sugar brix started to rise quickly throughout distribution. As a result, the shelf life was reduced significantly. Making it an unenjoyable eating experience for the consumers. The mandarin in our cold chain management can last 10 weeks but some fruits that we brought back from the market showed that the fruit tasted quite bitter rather than sweet. That is caused by the cold chain breakdown during distribution. The same batch of mandarins that were kept in cold storage over the same period of time, were still juicy and sweet. Mishandled supply chain can cause the quality of the fruit to deteriorate rapidly. That is why we always offer to deliver the fruit in a chilled truck to the distributors’ door so they don’t take a “short-cut” by using a cheaper temperature uncontrolled transport."
From “farm to table” is key to brand power
“The key to our Sunshine Farm brand is to manage a professional supply chain, from picking the fruits in the orchard to selling to consumers in the shop. This is what makes Sunshine Farms different to any other mandarins distributed in China. Perhaps we could sell 100 containers if we focus on trading and pricing alone, but we do not want to pursue the trading quantity. We only sold 10 containers this year from our own farm. We understand how our mandarin trees were grown and maintained, with the farm management and an irrigation plan in place is a key to the fruit quality and flavor. Different farm produce different fruits even they are all in the same region. We have started investing in the mandarin farm as it is the key to our Sunshine Farm brand’s success in China. Last year when we started for the first time, we only handled 3 containers and not even a single fruit batch was returned back to us. The distributors and consumers who were lucky enough to buy some have all come back this season to double or triple their orders. One Webchat shop owner alone bought 10 tons of the Sunshine Farm Aussie mandarin. We had to put a restriction of 10 tons for a single order quantity for one distributor in order to have fruit available to all other returning customers. At the end of the day, consumer power in China is so stron that their demand for high quality fruit keeps rising. They have great effect on our “Sunshine Farm” brand development.
“This year, we introduced a “pre-sale mandarin strategy” to allow the customers more options in choosing their preferred fruit sizes. Before we picked the mandarins from our orchard, most of them were pre-sold. An advantage of this is that our customers can order exactly what they want, which has kept them really happy. There is also a learning curve for our distributors of the Aussie mandarin as it is a much different fruit from the traditional Chinese mandarin. The Aussie mandarin is much larger, a uniform size and juicier, while Chinese domestic fruits are smaller, with less flavor, due to natural conditions. Many customers could not believe their eyes and questioned how the Aussie mandarin could be managed so well. Thanks to many years of hard work by the Australian citrus fruit growers and an advanced Australian farm management system; not taking any short cuts when managing the farm is key."
“We ran a marketing campaign that teaches our customers and consumers the journey the mandarin takes from farm to fork. I went to the farm myself to pick the first carton of fruit this season for export and discuss with our growers how each order could be handled to meet customers’ requirement and be delivered on time. Another marketing strategy in development is to offer our customers the opportunity to “adopt” the mandarin trees. They can name the trees that bear the fruits they purchase. For example, a customer who buys 1000kgs mandarins can have up to 10 trees with his preferred name put underneath the trees. The ownership is still ours but when they come to visit the orchard, it will be exciting for them to see their names next to their adopted trees. This is what urban Chinese people love nowadays, knowing they are eating the fruits directly from their own trees. They feel safe to eat fresh produce in this way.”
The Queensland Food Corporation was selected as the winner of the 2015 Queensland Premier’s Export Award to Greater China Thomas Burns Award.
For more information:
Lisa Liang
Queensland Food Corporation
www.qldfood.com.au
Email: lisa@qldfood.com.au
Phone: +61 7 38498879
Fax: +61 7 31126851
Mobile phone: + 61 414328986