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In existence for the past 59 years, Russell Burgess Ltd is a family-run company. Being an older business, there was a need to change in order to keep up with the times; hence, in 2003 Produce World evolved from Russell Burgess. Merging and acquiring businesses over the last number of years, it now has a turnover of about £85 million.
The first in this series of acquisitions, Rustler Produce has nine expert growers, producing some 1700 acres of onions and 400 acres of leeks. Based on some of the best soils in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, the growers are Farm Assured and are members of the LEAF and FWAG Biodiversity Scheme. With emphasis on low-cost performance, the company is quality-driven and takes pride in its committed and well-trained workforce.
In May 2000, the company invested £1.4 million in a factory facility with the most up-to-date machinery available. Since then the company has installed the first optical size, weight and quality sorter for onions in the UK. This cost £750,000 and reduces labour costs whilst removing the subjective judgement of humans and onion grading.
Solanumis one of the UK’s premier suppliers of potatoes with a reputation gained by providing quality and value for more than 60 years. Serving a number of blue-chip companies in both the retail and processing industries, this merger allowed Solanum to enjoy economies of scale as well as being able to become more customer-focused, allowing greater investment in research and development. Supplying over 70,000 tonnes each season, the company has a well-equipped potato-packing operation at Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire.
The other subsidiary of Produce World is Isleham Fresh Produce (IFP), having merged with Isleham Carrot Growers. Formed in June 2000, it specialises in the production and marketing of root vegetables, principally carrots and parsnips.
With a 50-year history, Isleham is serious about innovation, delivering change at pace and giving customers competitive advantages. It invests in continuous agronomic research and development of new crops and offers improvement on existing products, while remaining commit-ted to the best manufacturing and environmental practices.
RB Organic Ltd, the organic arm of Isleham, is focused on growing, processing and packing top quality potatoes and root vegetables. It has its own organic farms close to its factories and concentrates on the UK supply base.
William Burgess, the managing director of Produce World, outlines the new additions to the company: “We have three new businesses that joined the group last year. Briess focuses on the import-export business of organics from Europe. With this joint venture, we produce and pack in Spain, mainly for the UK but we do sell some products to the local market.
“Frupac, with an investment of £1.25 million on redevelopment of the old Russell Burgess site, officially opened its 5000 square metre facility in July 2004, creating modern, top-of-the-range third party packing facility with the latest high tech cold storage, 1000 pallet storage capacity and four ripening chambers.”
William goes on to explain: “We store and pack stone-fruits like peaches and nectarines, grapes and melons. We also deal with some salad crops including peppers, and tomatoes. Because it’s third-party packing we don’t actually have ownership of the products as our job is to store, pack and out-load it. It’s a dedicated Waitrose facility.”
Another new company to join Produce World in May 2004 is Prep Direct, making it the group’s prepared vegetables business, supplying the very best quality and range prepared vegetables to retail, foodservice and the processing industries. William elaborates: “We have a 53,000 sq ft, state-of-the-art facility, which is the biggest investment this year. We’re trying to develop a recipe dish business and will be launching a range of products with retail customers in April. We’re also investing a lot of money in new product development by mid 2005.”
Proud of its achievement of higher level accreditation of the British Retail Consortium Standard, Produce World is very concerned about the environmental impacts of its operations, as William explains: “Most of our products are LEAF-marque accredited (Linking Embalmment and Farming), which are environmental standards.
It is our goal to make all our products LEAF-marqued as we encourage our growers to work to this standard. In a number of operations, we use water for washing vegetables and we’ve got some of the best water treatment facilities in the industry enabling us to channel out cleaner water.”
With attention on quality, the company has, in the last few years, invested a significant amount of money in IT. William explains: “At the press of a button, we are able to trace any sales back to its source and produce field records that explain exactly what’s been done to that crop in the field. We have complete traceability records through our IT and pack houses; every product has a lot number and with that lot number we can trace it right back to its source.
In fact, every LEAF-marked grower has a code and you can visit the website and find out who the grower is and various other information. People are interested in the story behind food and are concerned in the safety of food so we plan to do a lot more to make the system quicker and more responsive. We have a good story to tell and we want it to be told.”
With a traceability system that enables Produce World to remain transparent to its consumers, it lives up to its motto ‘Growing Trust’. Representing the way in which the company conducts itself in every facet of its business and personal lives, it aims to create trust in all aspects of its dealings, ensuring customers are able to fully trust that the products are grown to the highest standard.
On a final note, William summarises: “A number of things that set us apart from competitors are our investment in people and machinery, our transparency and a good, open challenging relationship with suppliers.
“Although we are quite a big player in the industry we can’t afford to be satisfied and not concentrate on growth, therefore, we’re always on the lookout for suitable acquisi-tions that complement what we do.
We are hoping to grow and I’d like to think that in the next five years we’d double in size; probably half of that would come from organic growth and the rest from acquisitions." FC
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