Fruitbox

Chris White talks to Iryna Kukhtina of Ukraine Berries Association who explains how business continues despite Russia's invasion of her country and how the world can help by buying fresh fruits and vegetables from Ukraine.

Fruitbox is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce business. Every episode attracts a large global audience that tunes in to hear exclusive interviews and analysis about fresh fruits and vegetables. Fruitbox is produced by Fruitnet Media International.

To tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected]
To sponsor Fruitbox, contact [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris White talks to City Harvest London's head of food Dan McAlpine about how fresh fruit and vegetable businesses can help feed people in need in Western Europe's biggest city. 

Fruitbox is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce business. Every episode attracts a large global audience that tunes in to hear exclusive interviews and analysis about fresh fruits and vegetables. Fruitbox is produced by Fruitnet Media International.

To tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected]
To sponsor Fruitbox, contact [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FDOC global marketing director Samantha Lane tells Chris White about the comeback for Florida grapefruit.

Fruitbox is produced by Fruitnet Media International. Each episode attracts a global fresh produce business audience that tunes in to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis. Fruitbox is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce business.
To tell your story on Fruitbox, contact [email protected]
To sponsor or advertise, contact [email protected]
Read the latest fresh produce business news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many of the world’s leading tomato suppliers have invested heavily in better-tasting varieties, but the widespread perception that tomatoes ‘don’t really taste of anything’ seems to persist. Why is that?

For Synnøve Johansson, business development manager at Belgian cooperative Hoogstraten, the fact that consumers appreciate tastier products hasn’t yet altered the received wisdom among most supermarket buyers in the mainstream market.

Simply put, more investment is needed to create better-tasting supply, and more support is needed from retailers in particular to convey that quality. “A lot has changed in the category, but there are still tasteless tomatoes in the category,” she tells Fruitnet’s Chris White in the latest episode of Fruitbox.

The value of tomatoes that taste better is clear, Johansson adds: “Taste equals repeat purchase. Yes, as consumers we want local produce, we would like it to be organic, sustainably produced, sustainably packaged, and cheap.

“However, when we know it tastes good, all of these other requirements become less relevant. Taste is the best way for us as an industry to support that growth in consumption that we all want to see.”

To encourage more retailers to buy into that theory, Hoogstraten has invited a number of buyers to visit its production sites, where they can sample a range of great-tasting varieties – including some that are not yet available on the market.

Hosted by Chris White, Fruitbox attracts a big audience across the global fruit and vegetable business that tunes in every week to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis.

Produced by Fruitnet Media International, the show is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce industry.

To find out how you can tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected].

To learn about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, email [email protected].

Read the latest fresh produce industry news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fruit Logistica has been postponed from February to April, a point in time when the world’s leading fresh produce trade fair should be safer, not to mention more accessible.

Kai Mangelberger, project director of Fruit Logistica, believes the decision was a necessary one. “if you look at all the forecasts and you listen to all the experts, then it’s clear that April is a safer date than February,” he tells Chris White in the latest episode of Fruitbox.

“In addition, we also have the benefit of hindsight: we know what happened last year… We already have all the necessary hygiene and safety protocols in place. They will apply in April too,” he adds.

Mangelberger also believes that “many more” visitors will be able to attend Fruit Logistica in the European spring.

“We expect restrictions will be different to those that apply today,” he suggests. “And I am very optimistic that by next April more vaccines will have been approved by the German authorities. That means Fruit Logistica can be open to more people from around the world.”

Hosted by Chris White, Fruitbox attracts a big audience across the global fruit and vegetable business that tunes in every week to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis.

Produced by Fruitnet Media International, the show is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce industry.

To find out how you can tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected].

To learn about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, email [email protected].

Read the latest fresh produce industry news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lemons have been an undoubted sales success for the fresh produce industry in the past few years. But for Juan Martín Hilbert, fresh fruit commercial director at the world’s largest lemon producer, San Miguel, it is not yet time to start cutting slices for a round of celebratory drinks.

“There has been a big jump in the consumption of lemons, but the supply is catching up and sometimes overtaking demand in some months of the year. That’s a challenge for the industry,” he observes during the latest edition of Fruitbox.

“It’s still low if you compare it with other items. Consumption per capita in the US is only 2kg per year, whereas in Europe it’s more than 3.4kg.”

But there will be opportunities to sell even more, he agrees, provided the marketing helps consumers understand the fruit’s potential benefits. “My dream is that every person in the world drinks lemon water in the morning,” he says. “A lot of people I know are getting used to this idea and that drive is helping consumption.”

San Miguel has expanded its lemon production outside its native Argentina in recent years, adding sources in Uruguay, South Africa and Peru.

And having consolidated its position as a dependable counter-seasonal supplier out of the Southern Hemisphere, the next decade could potentially see it become a global source of the fruit.

“The second stage we are working on is being closer to the consumer,” Hilbert reveals. “Now we think that the power is shifting and we need to be very close to the consumer to give [them] a very good, fresh product all year round. Some retailers really need that.”

With commercial offices already established in Seville, Valencia and Shanghai, and with another due to open soon in Philadelphia, proximity could soon lead to production.

“We need to be close to the customers there, and if they need us to produce in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s definitely something we can work on.”

Hosted by Chris White, Fruitbox attracts a big audience across the global fruit and vegetable business that tunes in every week to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis.

Produced by Fruitnet Media International, the show is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce industry.

To find out how you can tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected].

To learn about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, email [email protected].

Read the latest fresh produce industry news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The importance of air cargo services to the global fresh produce business has certainly taken off in the past 18 months as the Covid-19 pandemic has landed ocean container shipping networks with a major circulation problem.

As Orlando Wong explains in the latest episode of Fruitnet’s conversation series Fruitbox, a sharp increase in demand for consumer goods in the world’s major markets has led to logjams in ports that where the traffic previously flowed freely.

“The last I checked there were about 64 vessels waiting to come into dock at [the Port of] Long Beach,” he reveals. “The situation has really not improved. The container yard is quadruple stacked, [whereas] normally it’s only double stacked. Essentially, Long Beach is now like a storage dock. There is no room to work around, and the infrastructure needs to be expanded in a big way.”

Wong is CEO of perishable produce logistics specialist Able Freight, and from his headquarters in Los Angeles he can see firsthand the pandemic’s impact on both sea and airfreight.

And despite a simultaneous decline in the number of passenger flights circumventing the earth, he says it’s also apparent that airlines are working to free up new space for cargo to take to the skies.

“It’s been a very challenging 18 months. Obviously it started with 95 per cent of all international passenger flights suspended. So we had to look elsewhere, mostly at charter airlines, for cargo capacity,” he recalls.

In effect, the new normal for airfreight may well involve a larger volume of temperature- and time-sensitive cargo capacity being in the sky.

“We were very fortunate that the airlines started to put their thinking caps on, and started converting passenger planes to cargo planes. So that really helped a big deal.”

During his 15-minute chat with Fruitnet’s Chris White, Wong also considers the ongoing effect of fuel price inflation, the potential for new models of electrified transportation, and the importance of making supply chain temperature control even more visible.

Hosted by Chris White, Fruitbox attracts a big audience across the global fruit and vegetable business that tunes in every week to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis.

Produced by Fruitnet Media International, the show is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce industry.

To find out how you can tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected].

To learn about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, email [email protected].

Read the latest fresh produce industry news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you were to design the perfect supermarket, what would it look like? So the story goes, at one point during Aldi Australia’s recent network redesign, one of the group’s two managing directors was asked what he thought of some proposed store visuals.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he reportedly replied. "Just show me the data."

More important, it seems, was the question of how the stores would function beneath their newly refreshed outward appearance.

For Mark Landini, the creative director of Sydney-based company Landini Associates who helped Aldi Australia reinvent itself, it’s not definitely just about design. His job is to come up with new store concepts that don’t just look good, but work well too.

And for a number of customers, including Aldi, Esselunga, Marks & Spencer and Loblaws, it is a strategy that seems to be working. Over the past three years, Landini has helped Aldi Australia to revamp all of its 650 stores.

Each store now has an eye-catching, unique look that incorporates work by local artists, but of at least equal importance has been the project’s emphasis on restoring a sense of joy to the shopping experience, with apparent great success.

“Design is often seen as purely decorative, as something they can apply to the skeleton of a business,” he explains in the latest episode of Fruitbox, Fruitnet’s series of conversations about the fresh produce industry.

“But we get in there before that skeleton is determined. We apply the decoration, but that is really only secondary to what we primarily do, which is to review how to make things work better, how to function better, and, in the case of fruit and vegetables, how to look better.”

For Landini, the way fruit and vegetables are displayed in supermarkets doesn’t always achieve the best possible result in terms of engaging customers. “Often they are covered up by facetious, thematic design that is completely unnecessary, very expensive and not very well lit,” he argues. We always start with the display and the lighting, then see what money we have left over. Not the other way around.”

Beyond the visual aspect and superficial experience, the functionality of supermarkets needs improvement, Landini says. “The thing that supermarkets have forgotten is that they started as markets,” he says. “They sell largely the same product and can therefore be exciting, chaotic, wonderful, noisy, shouty places.”

But in many cases, he suggests, they have become operationally led and largely sanitised. “They don’t make use of the valuable assets which they have. They need reinventing. Somebody needs to get the grown-ups in the room and have a jolly good talking to them to see if they can’t actually reach something which is a bit more sensible.”

During his conversation with Fruitnet’s Chris White, Landini goes on to discuss what supermarkets can do to improve their fruit and vegetable offer, as well as the more fundamental changes to the way we will shop for food in future.

Hosted by Chris White, Fruitbox attracts a big audience across the global fruit and vegetable business that tunes in every week to hear exclusive interviews and expert analysis.

Produced by Fruitnet Media International, the show is essential listening for everyone in the fresh produce industry.

For more information about Landini Associates, visit www.landiniassociates.com.

To find out how you can tell your story on Fruitbox, email [email protected].

To learn about sponsorship and advertising opportunities, email [email protected].

Read the latest fresh produce industry news at www.fruitnet.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.