By Jacob Darling, Group Sales and Marketing

With the 2018-19 season behind us, Just Avocados continues to focus on its marketing plan for the 2019-20 season. While the industry faced some challenges during the 2018-19 season, we are pleased with our business model’s ability to mitigate many of the external issues that challenged grower returns.

Our focus on international channel development continues for the season ahead. The key markets we plan to target in Asia are China, Thailand, Taiwan and Korea.

Our overarching strategy is to work towards a significant volume of fruit being picked, packed and sold in the early part of the season in Asia.

To handle our growers’ harvest expectations around early volume, we are ensuring market development is being done throughout Asia to support this volume at strong values.

Our goal is to resonate with people through a business to consumer strategy that gives the consumer a good reason to pay a premium for our products in the markets.

We’re also aware of the changing supply dynamic in Australia, including the Chile threat – another factor adding to the importance of our strategy in Asia.

In Australia in the coming season, we will focus on retail and continuing to ensure our customers at this level are looked after with a premium product. Our third-party logistics model through our Australian business JH Leavy & Co remains critical to this, as we want to continue to deliver fresher fruit into the market over other suppliers.

We still recognise the importance of stock age and the effect this has on quality.

Just Avocados continues to believe a profitable orchard is affected by many factors, including pack-outs, quality issues, consistent production and domestic and export returns.

We are moving towards a strategy that minimises growers’ exposure to these factors. High volumes into Asia early, ensuring relevance with our 12-month supply strategy and targeted Australian volumes will stand our team in great stead for the 2019-20 season.

Just Avocados has completed its 2018/19 export season and is preparing for a big 2019/20 season. Excited by key achievements, we look forward to announcing financial results and KPI’s that have been completed for the year.

While the season has been challenging, we continue to highlight the importance of our newly developed business model and the advantages we have seen with fruit speed to market. In a challenging environment for all, we are pleased to see our investment truly paying dividends for our New Zealand grower base.

Coupled with a direct retail programme which exceeded committed volumes, we look forward to developing and growing this channel for our grower base in years to come.

This year, Asia has benefited the pool greatly – placing 25.7% of our total volume into a range of ‘key markets’. This meant that we have enjoyed strong returns for all sizes right the way through the season’s duration.

We are thrilled with our outcome in the Chinese market this season, targeting a small volume of fruit to ensure we can connect premium quality with a premium channel. Made challenging by a year that has not been “top draw” regarding quality, we are pleased that our partners in Shanghai have been left with a good taste in their mouth in preparation for the approaching large crop.

2019/20 is an exciting time for Just Avocados – we are looking at a large crop, and a business model that we feel is going to seriously impact how growers determine value through their packer/exporter partners. Allowing growers to pick a large portion of fruit early to ensure minimal quality issues, higher pack outs, and lower waste is the focus moving forward. Linking this with a business that owns and fully controls their supply chain really provides our growers with a point of difference.

Sales receipts across all markets are still being finalized and all growers will be updated on final returns at coolstore door and OGR levels when this process is completed late March/early April with pool progress payments being paid as per our pool rules.

Regards,

Jacob Darling
GM Group Sales and Marketing
Darling Group