The outdoor vegetable growing company Church Brothers has more than 16,000 hectares in the United States. Because of that, the company is a cultivation giant even by American standards. Dutchman Ernst van Eeghen returned to the company as Vice President Business Development earlier this year, after working as Marketing Manager for the company between 2007 and 2014. During the PMA, Church Brothers’ focus was on the so-called ‘meal kit solutions.’ “The introduction of home delivery services, for retail as well, caused a revolution in the sector. A year ago, this category hardly existed, but demand is becoming quite large. And we’re only in the early stages of this category.”
Influence of economy on convenience
The assortment of Church Brothers consists of outdoor vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce and kale. Cultivation takes place in California, Arizona, New and Central Mexico. It’s unique that practically the entire area consists of own cultivation. “The enormous rise of kale in the US has stagnated somewhat by now, but sales are still growing,” Ernst says. About half of all products are processed in their own processing plant. “Our two processing facilities are in Salinas (California) and Yuma (Arizona). We process between 600,000 and 700,000 kilos per day. The influence of the economy on sales of these convenience products is immediately noticeable. When the economy is bad, our sales consists for 40 per cent of convenience products, but in good economical times, it amounts to 60 per cent. It’s a growing category for us, we get much demand for bell peppers that we hollow out using a patented technique.”
Searching for continued automation
Church Brothers is still growing considerably, and they are currently dedicated to growing outside of California to supply customers year-round. The company supplies to practically all major fast food chains in the country, and is therefore dependent on mass. “We started our organic branch two years ago, but the focus of our business is on conventional. We’re anxiously looking for innovations, but we need the volumes,” Ernst explains. The biggest challenge to keep volumes high is the shortage of labour. “Labour is the largest threat for the entire sector. That’s why we’re working hard on automising our activities in the fields and in the factory. I travel all over the world for that, and was recently in the Netherlands for the ‘Seeds meets Technology’ event. After all, the Netherlands has much knowledge about this subject. Labour costs are much higher there, but we have larger volumes.”
As a second threat, Ernst mentions a possible food safety issue. “Despite the enormous care we take, anything could happen at any fresh produce company. Machines and systems can be set up, but people make mistakes,” he says. As a third threat for the American cultivation he mentions the water shortage. “It’s a bit less urgent right now, because of the record amount of rain we had in February and March. But it hasn’t solved the problem. We went from a critical drought to a very serious drought. Fortunately there are also many chances, such as the rise of meal kits, and the attention for nutritional values of vegetables. That has really resulted in a considerable sales increase for certain types of cabbages and sprouts, in any case,” he concludes.
For more information:
Ernst van Eeghen
Church Brothers
1906 Portola Drive, Suite C
Salinas CA, 93908
Tel: 831-7962420
[email protected]
www.churchbrothers.com
