In recent years, the soft fruit market has flourished. The Greenery also experienced a considerable increase with the Business Unit Soft Fruit. Although the activities of the sales organisation are becoming increasingly centralised, a new DC for soft fruit and asparagus arose in Breda. According to sourcing team leader Gerard van Loon, the location is unique. “In a radius of 30 kilometres, 50 million kilograms of strawberries are grown here!” The official opening will take place tomorrow. AGF.nl was given a sneak peak.
Gerard van Loon
The new Zachtfruit DC has been built right behind the former location of the IABC site. “Real estate developer WDP bought our old location, and we are now renting this building from them. And there’s more room at the site, so I hope more soft fruit-related companies will be established here,” Gerard says. The new DC has a total surface of 13,400 m2, of which 8,200 m2 is conditioned. The building has 23 docks, 9 cooling cells with racks of up to 3 metres high, meaning each pallet can be approached singly. One cell has been designed to re-cool extra fast.
Four Proseal strawberry packing lines have been installed in the new building, two lines for packing asparagus and rhubarb, and a separate line for cherries and plums. “In total, 16 million units will be packed here annually, with strawberries making up the lion’s share,” Gerard explains. An important point of attention is that the collection of blueberries, redcurrant, raspberries and blackberries will take place, unchanged, at the soft fruit station of Anton van Garderen in Schalkwijk.
With the new DC, The Greenery anticipates shortening the lead times to retail customers. “When a retailer has a promotion, the strawberries are shipped in multiple lorries at the same time. These do not come from individual growers. With our four lines, we always have plenty of production in house. However, we do look at coupling major customers directly with major growers,” Gerard says.
Another development is that The Greenery is starting a project to auction fruit directly from the fields for several large horticulturalists. “This was a major success for our grower Cox in Horst last year, and we will now expand this to other growers. Customers appreciate knowing which product is supplied by which grower. Anyway, we only auction full pallets at the same time. For this project, we are mostly looking at growers that are farthest away from us.”
“In any case, the auction is an important sales tool for soft fruit and asparagus,” Gerard says. “That’s why we have always dedicated ourselves to auction sales with these products. This is also a desire of our growers. The permanent programmes with retailers are the base, but additionally, they also want to profit from the free market. The price of blackberries, for example, could suddenly shoot up, and it should then not be the case that you are purely dependent on the programmes with the predetermined prices.”
The experience with automation system SAP was a major benefit during the equipping of the new building. “We had a three-year trial run, and we are now able to take advantage of that,” Gerard continues. “We are the first soft fruit supplier whose system is based on SAP. For customers who also work with this, it is a huge advantage. Over the years, an enormous flow of Big Data comes from the system. Within our organisation we are working hard on applying this data to the productions with an agriculturist such as Klaas de Jager. I am convinced that we can better manage the planning data and supply because of this.”
When asked whether building a new DC for seasonal products isn’t a waste of the year-round use of the building, the Sourcing manager answers that while April to June are the peak months, supply is becoming increasingly more year-round now. “We receive strawberries twelve months of the year. Peaks are starting to even out because larger strawberry growers are using more and more year-round plants. Besides, we process rhubarb on location during the winter months as well, and the import of strawberries, soft fruit and asparagus from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Peru.”
The increasing production of soft fruit under glass also ensures a more even supply. “Furthermore, we have noticed an autonomous increase in the expansion of strawberry cultivation for existing growers, and an influx of other growers for raspberries and blackberries. Especially the greenhouse raspberry production has multiplied,” Gerard explains. “This also anticipates the desire of buyers for stable supply, and to not be dependent on the weather circumstances in Southern Europe. Although it should be mentioned that, in comparison to strawberries, the difference in appearance with, for example, Spanish blackberries and raspberries is barely perceptible.”
While in other sectors organic production is increasing considerably, that is only limitedly the case in soft fruit. “Organic soft fruit cultivation is incredibly difficult. The risks of an organic cultivation are enormous. When I see how cleanly our growers cultivate, it is already incredibly close to organically. I personally see more profit in a clean, conventional cultivation,” Gerard says. “And fortunately, the prospects of conventional soft fruit are looking well. The market is booming. Despite demand for strawberries being stable to slightly rising, demand for woody small fruit is increasing a lot. The UK is most prominent in that, but other countries are following. We will have plenty to do in coming years!”
