From 5 to 7 September, Japanese peeler innovator, Astra, attended Asia Fruit Logistica. Ryo Takeshita, a Sales Manager at Astra, shared his story: “This is our first time at AFL, although we only booked a small standard stand, many customers came to visit us, some even brought us gifts to thank us for our service. I was very happy and proud to meet such a great customer at the show. besides meeting old friends, we also made good sales to a number of new regions. We are very pleased with the fruitful results we got from the two days of the show."
“Factories demand higher productivity, lower labour costs, less waste”
With the boost from AFL, Astra has sold more than 60 peelers this September alone, 70% of which are international sales, including an order to a large prep meal processing company in the US. According to Ryo, in addition to regions with a long history of automation, such as Europe and North America, demand from Central America, the Middle East and Africa is booming. “In September, we had a large repeat order from an existing customer in Guatemala, found new distributors in Brazil and Colombia, and are in discussions with a potential clients from Saudi Arabia.”
When asked how the peeler could benefit customers in this region, Ryo explained: “In Central America, factories in Guatemala bought our peeler to achieve higher productivity with lower labour costs. Factories in Vanuatu mostly buy the peeler with adjustable peeling depth to peel lemons with a consistent thickness," says Ryo, "As for Africa, many may think that labour costs there are low, which may be true. But our African customers, such as dehydrated mango factories in Uganda and Ghana, use the peeler mainly because they want to reduce the cost of product waste.”
“Our peelers are also used in the Middle East. Ready-to-eat fruit is common in countries such as Israel, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Our customers use Astra peelers to make their products more competitive in the market with a better appearance, less dripping and a longer shelf life. This enables them to sell the products at a higher price,” says Ryo.
“Our growth cannot be achieved without the word-of-mouth support of our customers”
According to Ryo, Astra was founded in 1991. In 30 years, the company has sold more than 5000 units of peelers, the majority of which are domestic sales within Japan. 'It is only since 2018 that we have started to explore the global market. In that year, international sales were only 2% of our total sales. This year, 30% of our sales are from international customers, and the total sales revenue has also tripled compared to a few years ago.'
When asked about the secret of Astra”s sales growth, Ryo explained, “Our international growth cannot increase without the word-of-mouth from existing customers. Taking our experience at AFL as an example, it happened a few times that when an existing customer happened to pass by our stand and saw us demonstrating the peeler to a group of visitors, the existing customer started explaining the machine and sharing his experience of using it with the group of visitors in their own language. You see, these people process the same type of fruit and could potentially be competitors, but our old customers are still generously spreading the good word about our products. We are very grateful to our customers. What we have achieved cannot happen without their support.”
“With our growing international business, we feel the need to connect with our international customers, keep them updated on our latest innovations and get their feedback. To do this, we are putting more effort into digital marketing and announcing our new innovations through international media platforms. We often get a good amount of feedback when current customers see our articles, some viewers also actively share the news with their networks. As you can see, our customers play an important role in the growth of our business, without them we will not achieve this.”
New factory and new innovation
With the growth in sales, Astra's old factory can no longer cope with the production capacity. On 22 March, Astra held an opening ceremony for its new building with an updated production facility. “We know that simply increasing sales is not enough. In order to keep customer satisfaction at the same high level, we need to work consistently on developing the peeler to an even more compact size with advanced functions. At the moment, a group of more than 10 technicians is developing a new fruit processing machine. I cannot reveal too many details now, but the combination of our peeler and the new machine will take fruit processing to the next level,” Ryo said.
For more information:
Mr. Ryo Takeshita
ASTRA Inc.
Tel.: +81 0245412444
Email: [email protected]
https://en.e-astra.co.jp/
