Australian peaches and pairs are firm and not anyway like those soggy fruits canned and packaged by overseas producers let alone the local natural juices, with less sugar hype. Its about time the CSIRO came clean with the facts on firm fruit and local fresh produce over imported tosh. ‘ Buy local’ bearing fruit SUE NEALES THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 12, 2014 SPC chief executive Peter Kelly had no doubts yesterday that the sudden turnaround in the fortunes of his embattled fruit processing company - epitomised by a new $70 million sales deal with supermarket giant Woolworths - owed much to enthusiastic NSW tweeter and loyal buy-Australian foodie Linda Drummond. At 9.28pm on a Thursday in early February, the Newcastle marketing consultant, with no previous links to SPC, had sent out a tweet on social media urging everyone to eat peaches and ice cream the following Sunday in support of the embattled Shepparton, Victoria, fruit processor. “Who doesn’t remember those childhood desserts of peaches, pears or fruit salad and ice-cream?” Drummond wrote. “Let’s relive those glory days and help support a community too. Let’s make Sunday, SPC Sunday. Serve up some SPC goodies on Sunday and share your pictures on social media.” Within an hour, after hundreds of fellow social media users, celebrities and politicians had responded with enthusiasm, Drummond created a special hashtag or Twitter link for her idea, #SPCsunday. Nearly eight million retweets and messages followed, and a new people-power movement was born. Drummond says now that her spontaneous marketing campaign to save struggling SPC from closure, after its request to the federal government for a $25m rescue package was knocked back, was born out of frustration at the risk of yet another Australian company shutting its doors. “Like many people in Australia, I had watched the news unfold about SPC Ardmona with increasing dismay; the thought of farmers losing their livelihoods, the factory closing and the negative impact on the community gave me chills,” Drummond said later. “Buying local comes naturally to me, but I must admit my pantry didn’t feature any SPC products. So when I shared a few tweets with a Twitter friend about making an effort to buy SPC this week, I realised it needed to be bigger than just buying a token tin of tomatoes; to effect real change we needed a concerted effort by a wider community.” Kelly says that is exactly what Drummond achieved. SPC canned fruit sales soared 60 per cent in February, culminating in a $70m new five-year sales deal between SPC and Woolworths, announced yesterday. “SPC has recently seen a massive surge in sales as more Australians have opted to get behind local companies and buy Australian made and grown products,” Kelly says. “This was partly driven by the grassroots #SPCsunday Twitter campaign started by a loyal consumer, Linda Drummond, that is still going strong.” The rapid turnaround since SPC’s desperate troubles were revealed last year - Kelly says its decline has been halted - has surprised many retailing experts. They are now trying to divine exactly what motivation lies behind the strong and unexpected consumer support for the famed Goulburn Valley food company. Long-time Australian food manufacturer and advocate for Australian-made goods Dick Smith, of Dick Smith Foods, says there are four important factors that encourage consumers, sometimes subconsciously, to buy locally made and grown food. One element is about wanting to help and support Aussie farmers, so often portrayed as battling droughts and floods, being deep in debt or, as in the case of fruit growers who lost contracts when SPC’s fortunes crashed, bulldozing and burning their beautiful but now worthless fruit trees. A second factor is a desire to support Australian jobs and local manufacturing; an especially evocative wish in recent months as the major car manufacturers, including Holden, have announced they are pulling out of Australia. Third, there is growing awareness that Australian food is grown and produced under stringent conditions, laws, permits and standards that regulate and restrict everything from the chemicals that can be put on crops and the additives that livestock can be fed to the way food is processed. “It is undoubtedly safer and better quality; the way I have seen food made in some factories I have been inside in China would make your hair stand on end; it wouldn’t be allowed here,” says a passionate Smith. Finally, he says consumers also have a strong sense of patriotism when they buy food clearly labelled as Australian-grown and made. “I don’t like to call it nationalism but patriotism; the way I explain it is that just as I barrack for Australia when the Olympic Games are on, I do the same thing when I sell my food as unashamedly Australian and I think consumers buy it for that reason too,” Smith says. SPC’s Kelly sees it as a simple but heartfelt change in the way consumers think, behave and shop. “Everyone has seen the SPC story; they’re starting to question where their food comes from and what is the quality of the food they are eating that comes from overseas,” he says. “With that in mind, as well as the knowledge that this will help farmers and keep local jobs, they’re buying our products in numbers that we would never have anticipated. “That’s what caused the turnaround. Not anything else.” The issue facing the big retailers now is whether the present preference by Australian consumers for home-grown products will last. Large corporations such as Woolworths - which yesterday committed to buying an extra 24,000 tonnes of fruit and tomato products from SPC to 2020 - are better known for their focus on profit and shareholder returns than for their altruism or patriotism. But Tjeerd Jegen, Woolworths’ director of supermarkets, believes it is possible to meet the changing needs of consumers looking for more Australian products and still be profitable. “We have seen quite a strong change in customer preference in the past year and a half; they are wanting to buy more Australian food and see more Australian-grown and produced products on our shelves,” Jegen says. “Luckily we had the same intention. We made a mistake four years ago when we outsourced all of our frozen vegetables to Asia (and sales fell); we realised we should go back to Australian grown, but because Simplot is the only (Australian company making frozen vegetables) it is difficult to make that change back to Australian in the short term. “But from April all our frozen vegetables will again be from Australia and we expect sales to immediately go up, just as they did when we switched from imports to SPC fruit.” Jegen says the preference for consumers to buy local food is a global trend, with British and US supermarkets starting a decade ago to publicise and promote their growing support for local farmers and food. “But there is a much stronger connection between consumers and farmers here than anywhere else. This might be an urban society, but people are celebrating that farm heritage much more strongly here than in Europe or America, and that shows up with a very strong link between consumers and farmers,” Jegen explains. “Our research also shows that the safety and purity of local food and the purity of land here resonates strongly with consumers; I think Australians are now realising how blessed we are with the best fresh foods on our doorstep.” Woolworths is responding to such consumer preference for Australian products with more prominent branding. Think kangaroos and Australian flags. Jegen says with shoppers making split-second decisions about what brand to buy, such obvious labelling is necessary. The supermarket chain is also introducing regional and “state” aisles into its national stores, where local favourites will be stocked. A trial in South Australia this year saw Balfours “frog cakes” - an old Adelaide favourite - suddenly transform into a store bestseller. Research backs up such moves. A recent Klein Partnership marketing report for vegetable grower organisation AUSVEG found that 80 per cent of surveyed consumers bought Australian produce because they wanted to support “our farmers and for Australia to have a viable industry”. Another 67 per cent agreed with the statement that “when purchasing Australian fruit and vegetables, I’m happy to pay a little more for Australian produce”. Victorian Farmers Federation president Peter Tuohey says farm organisations have encouraged consumers to demand supermarkets use more Australian-grown produce in their house brand lines. He says it is gratifying to see those efforts now bearing fruit, with the new SPC-Woolworths Select home brand deal. The five-year contract alone will require SPC’s 156 fruit growers in the Goulburn and Murray valleys to plant an extra 86,000 trees to meet the need for 5000 extra tonnes of produce annually. “Ultimately it’s consumers who’ve made the difference, by sending a clear message to Woolworths and Coles that they want to eat Australian food, not snack packs and tinned fruit from China, South Africa or Swaziland,” Tuohey says. “Every grower, every business and everyone who campaigned hard to turn the supermarkets from imported to local produce deserves praise; it’s great to see community action deliver results.” But Smith warns such a turnaround in consumer sentiment may not be long lasting. He recalls a decade ago when launching Dick Smith Foods with great fanfare - and at the same time as many Australian local manufacturers were closing - that there was a rush to buy Australian. His sales turnover instantly hit $80m a year. But after a few years it fell to just $8m, as consumers lost their patriotism and turned once again to cheaper imported food on the supermarkets’ shelves. Now, with the present buy-Australian and buy-local feeling, turnover is once again at $20m and rising. “I agree we have seen a swing back to supporting Australian food, and the supermarkets are sensibly responding,” says Smith. “But I think it will be very hard for SPC in the long term; whether we like it or not, most people will always drift back to buying the cheapest food, despite what they say in the surveys about supporting Australian-grown and made products and being prepared to pay more.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 09:20:01 +0000
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