Norman Collett

Although it recently acquired importer Metro Fruit, which specialises in  stonefruit, topfruit, vegetables and salads, English fresh produce marketer Norman Collett says its business has largely been unaffected by the exchange rate difficulties.

This principal reason behind this, explains managing director Andy Sadler, is that in spite of the purchase of Metro Fruit, the company is clearly focused on marketing English-grown products rather than imports.

However, this is not to say that the Kent-based company entirely immune from recent events. Mr Sadler says the current economic recession, combined with high oil and labour costs, has meant Norman Collett has had to achieve greater efficiencies to manage price returns to growers.   

As a company, Norman Collett markets fruit for around 40 Topfruit and Stonefruit growers who are primarily based in the southern English region of Kent. The company estimates that it markets some 25 per cent of the entire UK Topfruit crop and between 35-40 per cent of the country’s combined Stonefruit harvest.

Norman Collett now supplies leading UK grocery retailers Tesco and Sainsbury’s with around 40 per cent of their British Stonefruit, which it sources principally from 11 allied cherry growers and nine plum producers.

Despite this, Topfruit, and in particular apples, remains the mainstay of the marketer’s business. Starting with early varieties, such as Discovery, in July, the company expects to market around  200,000 cartons of fruit each month at the peak of the season; Cox, Gala and other varieties are sold from September through to the new year, with Cox stocks managed to meet the incoming Southern Hemisphere fruit in April. According to the company’s business development manager, Sarah Calcutt, Norman Collett will be delivering a focussed promotional campaign to drive   sales of Rubens, a new variety that was officially launched in the UK last year; ‘we have strong grower support for this new apple, with some 140,000 trees already planted volumes available will be increasing quickly.  It is a high quality, high yielding well storing variety which also has great flavour and texture – it is rare to get all these attributes together’.

Ms Calcutt says Rubens, which is being placed by retailers alongside higher-priced products such as Kanzi and Pink Lady, received a “fantastic amount of press attention” at its launch last year, which resulted in the crop selling out in stores within four weeks.

In common with other Rubens marketers in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, Norman Collett will be promoting the variety through samplings at mainline train stations in London on 26 October. The event will also be staged in mainline train stations in Munich and Bonn in Germany, Schipol in the Netherlands and Balzano in Italy.

According to Mr Sadler, Norman Collett has also been boosted over recent months by retailer Tesco’s renewed emphasis on regional sourcing, which he says led to the marketer sending 20 per cent more fruit to Tesco’s Kent stores in 2008 compared with the year before.

Attention is also being paid to improvement in the availability of organically grown fruit from the UK.  A concept orchard has been planned in partnership with East Malling Research to investigate the suitability of a range of varieties for the English climate and consumer. ‘this is part of an ongoing strategy to investigate new varieties that offer a commercial and environmental improvement over some of the current offer from the UK industry’ commented Sadler.  Colletts support a number of investigative trials into both conventional and organic varieties of top fruit as well as working with international chemical companies, such as Bayer CropScience, on projects to reduce the use of pesticides or to prevent residues in produce.