'Fruit marketers must consolidate as retailers call the shots'

Competition
forces innovation
Ray Smuts
FIRST, THE good news: The world's peoples are not eating less fruit. Now for the bad news: The world is not sufficiently populous to handle over-production of fruit.
Following on South Africa's 'annus horribilis' fruit season last year (2000) - to quote Capespan Group Holdings Ltd chairman Dr Paul Cluver - the nation's premier fruit marketer has enjoyed a much more satisfactory 2001, accounting for around 52 million cartons or some 36% of all fruit exported to all destinations from South Africa.
Even so, there is no room for complacency and it's clear much needs to be done in order for fruit not to lose its centre-stage positioning.
Capespan logistics guru Dr Dawie Ferreira makes the observation that for many years the world's population matched the tempo of fruit production, that is until the early 1990s when fruit volumes overtook people numbers.
"We have now reached a stage of global over-production and with it all sorts of pressures on the market which makes these very difficult times for all of us. The years ahead will of necessity have to see considerable innovation in fruit development."
Capespan, cognisant of those quick-as-a-blink consumer preferences - the Pink Lady apple variety rather than the Granny Smith for example - and the need for innovation, is experimenting with a wide range of new cultivars in a multi-million rand research programme, in addition to winning more kudos for fruit as a quick and simple snack, in preference to the chocolate bar or pizza slice.
The emphasis, says Ferreira, is increasingly on making retail fruit as "alluring" as possible, it's no longer simply a case of plonking it on the shelf.
Along with non-arguable consumer preferences - they change so rapidly not even US agricultural studies are able to keep pace - is the inescapable fact that the mighty retail players of this world
are consolidating even further through acquisitions and mergers while
the production sector remains fragmented.
What this has brought about is the passing of power to retailers who now pluck the guitar strings with regard to what they want, how much they want and when they want, so in Ferreira's estimation producers will clearly have to consolidate in order to shift the balance of power, if only marginally.
"World trade has moved away from the old supply-push to demand-pull scenario and what we will experience ahead is a much greater pre-requisite to deliver according to programmes."