New retail brands keep emerging as the demand for fresh produce continues to increase. In fact, branded produce sales are expected to reach almost US$7 billion by 2018, up from $5.6 billion in 2013.

To meet this demand and differentiate themselves from competitors, fresh produce brands are looking to build brand loyalty and illustrate value using a variety of marketing and advertising channels to reach and interact with their consumers — and that means increasing their focus and investment in marketing.

All eyes are fixed on the weather in Washington! According to Rebecca Lyons, International Marketing Director at the Washington Apple Commission, if the weather does not get any warmer before the beginning of this year’s harvest, the season is predicted to be good and should yield the expected 168 million cartons of apples (fresh and processed), which will represent 64 percent of the nation’s apples and a massive 15.7 percent increase from the 2015 season.

Red Delicious remains the number one in terms of volume for the state, but the recent years have seen an increase of Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith and Honey Crisp. A third of the production is exported, the two primary markets being Mexico and Canada due to geographical proximity, followed by Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Europe remains a difficult market to enter due to their extensive existing apple production and post-harvest treatment restrictions that are in place.

As New Zealand’s kiwifruit season was drawing to a close for 2016, we took a day out to head down the road and catch up with Hume Pack-N-Cool to see how their season had gone. Since 1984, Hume and Compac have been working together. This was the year that Compac founder Hamish Kennedy was building his very first grading machine for his parents’ kiwifruit orchard in Kerikeri. At the same time, Hume founder Dave Hume was building his first coolstore in Katikati.

A medium sized forklift weighs about the same as an average dump truck — and can cause just as much damage or injury. In fact, forklifts are still one of the greatest health and safety hazards in our packhouses, warehouses and manufacturing sites.

In order to get the highest return from your crop, it’s essential you separate the good from the bad. The following are 10 of the most common reasons packhouses invest in defect sorting technology.

Co-founder of Fruitday, China’s leading fruit e-tailer, Loren Zhao talks about the company’s recently created packing and marketing arm, its new proprietary orange brand ‘Mr Orange’, and the future of fruit branding in China.

Reduce fruit damage, lower your labor costs, and maximise your uptime.

In today’s competitive fruit packing environment, fresh produce brands must find creative ways to extract maximum value from every piece of fruit on every tree.

Nature is unpredictable and packhouses must expand their sorting resolution to ensure quality and value maximisation. With today’s sorting technology, field run fruit can be broken down into an infinite number of grades and sizes. Some packhouses have as many as 13 size breaks and 4 quality grades, giving as many as 52 different pack-outs. And this is before we start to look at different packaging types.

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Growing the perfect piece of fruit takes years of effort. Selecting the correct plot of land, choosing the right cultivar and carefully nurturing the plant through the early years. In the months before harvest there is hard work pruning, fertilising, spraying and giving the fruit the best chance of being in perfect condition when it comes time to harvest.

The sticker on a piece of fruit is part of your brand promise - the eating experience will meet consumer expectations and keep them coming back for more.  But how can you guarantee the taste of the fruit?

As the middle class grows both in size and wealth, they’re also far more discerning about fresh produce quality & providence - we are seeing a shift in the global supply chain, particularly in the distribution centers.

Traditionally, produce would go from a packhouse to supermarket without much flexibility around pack types. But today, flexibility and quality assurance is essential, as packs handle a wealth of different produce types and service a variety of customers. Repackers sit between the packhouse and the supermarket and add value to a product by packing in a way that appeals to retail and local consumer demographics. They also sort the produce just before it reaches the consumer, ensuring that premium produce is delivered in a premium pack. 

PRESS RELEASE - AUCKLAND, New Zealand and Orange County, Calif. May 18, 2016 – Compac, a leader in post-harvest integrated solutions and services to the global fresh produce industry, today announced it has appointed Darrell Smithson to the role of VP Global Services, effective immediately. Smithson was most recently Vice President, Managed Services, with Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automation.