Mike Knowles

Our special feature on Scandinavia (Eurofruit Magazine, August issue) provides me with the perfect excuse to say a fond farvel to one of our closest friends in the fresh produce trade, Coop Trading’s head of business development Svend Aage Kristensen.

After what will be almost 48 years in the trade, the great Dane has decided it is at last time to hang up his calculator and leave the tough business of sourcing fruit and vegetables for the Nordic consumer cooperatives to someone with significantly fewer air miles. By the end of August, he will have traded in the early, pre-work swims and banana pricing charts for a glass of fine wine out in the garden and the chance to spend more time with his family. "It’s a gift I need to use," he tells us.

I hope Svend won’t mind me saying that he did not conform to the stereotype of a modern European retail buyer. Although he was, by all accounts, a formidable negotiator, there was nothing hard-nosed about his way of working; travelling far and wide to visit plantations, growers, suppliers and exporters, Svend showed a very real affinity for the entire fruit and vegetable business and was fully aware of the need to develop equitable partnerships that traded in good quality products, instead of embarking on the kind of race to the bottom seen in other markets.

A few years ago, he told this magazine: "The competition is very tough, and as retailers we are always pressed when it comes to the bottom line. We need to look carefully for added value through innovation and new products if we are to avoid all ending up as discounters." A firm advocate of fairness when it came to paying growers, Svend leaves behind an industry that has come a long way in terms of its ethical treatment of workers, not to mention one that continues to innovate and develop new products which offer the chance to generate additional value for growers, traders and consumers.

Mike Knowles

Summer is a great time to be alive, and the life-affirming spirit that pervades anywhere lucky enough to be blessed with a healthy dose of sunshine and warm temperatures is something upon which many in the fresh produce business should be looking to capitalise.

Take the 23 tonnes of strawberries sold during Wimbledon fortnight in the UK; or the vast quantities of succulent peaches and nectarines marketed to thirsty consumers on Italy’s Adriatic Riviera; or indeed the Chiquita bananas handed out to Greek consumers lying on the beach and trying to forget about taxes: all of these are examples of solar-powered marketing, and I believe the opportunities to engage consumers through seasonal campaigns will gradually increase across Europe in the coming years as our economies begin to settle down.

Since we are now all destined to work until well into old age, the chances are we’ll be looking to enjoy ourselves along the way – we’ll be after more convenience, reasonable prices and the best quality and taste possible – and summer will indeed be the time to make hay. Not yet found your target market? Try some summery marketing and you may find you’re getting warmer.

At the recent Fresh Convenience Congress, a new event organised by Eurofruit Magazine and the Fresh Produce Journal for the international fresh convenience sector, we heard how the head chef at London’s Wembley Stadium had to ensure he had 1.5 tonnes of chopped fruit ready for three consecutive Take That concerts. The sole reason? The fans at those three concerts (including my dear wife) love a bit of fruit in their Pimms. Once a brand has established a tradition, it can be a very powerful thing; us Brits wouldn’t dream of sipping Pimms without a slice of cucumber, a slice of orange, a strawberry or two and a sprig of mint. Perish the thought! So here’s to boosting fruit sales and here’s to more sunshine!

Mike Knowles

My recent trip to New Zealand not only gave me a valuable opportunity to find out more about the country's kiwifruit business, it also gave me a chance to meet someone I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time, namely Zespri shipping manager Mike Knowles.

It's not every day you get to meet someone with the same first and last names – let alone a namesake working in the same industry as you – and suffice to say we got on extremely well, discovering a shared fondness for beer, sport and, of course, the fruit trade.

I spent an afternoon with Mike and his colleagues at the Port of Tauranga, and as we watched pallets of kiwifruit being loaded onto a ship, I caught myself thinking momentarily about how important names really are. My wife and I are expecting our first baby next month and, naturally, we are keen to come up with suitable names. The natural concern is to be sure our choices will match the baby’s character, but of course it’s probably more a case of the person growing up to suit the name.

Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I think that’s also the case with fresh produce brands. During my week-long stay in the Bay of Plenty, I was aware of how important the Zespri trademark has become to the New Zealand kiwifruit trade. Here is a name the industry has grown accustomed to over time: since the industry’s new single-desk marketer was christened back in 1996, it has come to represent quality, care and commitment to providing the best possible service to growers and customers. The brand carries that promise and secures that reputation.

Like everyone, myself and Mike have sought to build reputations by providing people with the right level of service and quality, and our names are the personal brands that represent those values. Of course, should my reputation as a journalist ever slip, I now have the added option of being able to send Mike into early retirement and start doing his job…

Mike Knowles

For those members of the European fresh produce trade attending last month’s FRESH congress in St Petersburg, the discussion had been all about how to get into Russia. By the time they came to leave, however, getting out of the country was an altogether more pressing priority.

As delegates dined in the relaxed surroundings of the city's Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace on the evening of 14 April, no-one surely could have been aware that, more than 2,600km away in southern Iceland, a bubbling volcano that many reckoned was going back to sleep had in fact begun to throw a large plume of ash high into the air, flinging its violent and dangerous cloud in the direction of northern Europe.

For those due to return home the following day, a peaceful morning lie-in following the hard work and networking of the previous two days would soon be broken by phone calls and messages drawing attention to the impending air travel ban. For those not based in Russia, hangovers ranging from mild to major would have to be forgotten as calls to colleagues back home, to airlines and even to embassies suddenly became more urgent.

Getting home had just got a whole lot harder. For some, the fast-shrinking range of alternative routes home brought out the very best in terms of resourcefulness and ingenuity: One group of Dutch people attending the conference ended up hiring a car to get them home via Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen on a 40-hour road trip back to Holland. Elsewhere, one British delegate somehow convinced a passing Russian to drive him to the French port of Calais. “We had a lot of fun actually,” he said, with the far-away stare of a man who’s just travelled in a Russian car to France through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
I might have guessed that it would take more than a belligerent Icelandic volcano to stop the finest minds in the fresh produce trade from getting to where they needed to be.

Mike Knowles

As a journalist, it’s amazing how much more you can discover when you actually sit down and spend some time talking to someone face to face. It’s a very different experience to talking on the phone or exchanging emails – especially if you’ve never met – because if all goes to plan then the person you’re speaking to is going to relax, feel more at ease in your company and, with any luck, offer you a gem of a story which will add value to your publication. It doesn’t always happen that way, of course, but it certainly makes a difference when you can see the whites of their eyes.

Naturally, our excellent news team here at Eurofruit – the same people, by the way, who are responsible for www.fruitnet.com – is always up to speed with the latest annoucements from all the major fresh produce companies. Over the years, they have become adept at keeping on top of a regular stream of press releases and corporate announcements while also managing to follow up leads and generate their own exclusive content. However, they also realise it’s only when you manage to get what our American friends so aptly call ‘face-time’ with industry players that you start to feel like you’re getting to know what’s really going on.

It’s not that we’re looking to expose secrets or give competitors a glimpse of your commercial strategies, but it’s definitely our job to promote the sharing of ideas and give coverage to the companies that are turning those ideas into success, progress and, ultimately, cold, hard profit. In the long run, promoting what’s good about the trade itself ends up being of benefit to the entire fresh produce trade.

My interview with Dole Europe president Jean-Christophe Juilliard (Eurofruit Magazine, April Issue) provided a lot of insight into what’s driving the company’s development here in Europe. For the record, he also told me that his favourite fruit is the redcurrant, which may explain the group’s recent move into berries. It’s amazing what people are prepared to tell you when you’re sat right opposite them.