US-based Agrovision is a vertically integrated grower, packer, shipper and marketer of fruit, with blueberries at the centre of its business.
The company, headquartered in California, has agricultural operations over the state border in Oregon, as well as in Mexico, Chile and Peru. Further afield, it has a presence in Morocco, Egypt, India and China.
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In March last year, Agrovision, which was set up in 2012, secured investment from Los Angeles investment firm Aliment Capital. At the time, the company said the deal would provide “additional capital and expertise to help take Agrovision to its next level of growth”.
The opening quarter of the year has seen the group harvest the first crop of blueberries grown in China, where it has had a commercial presence since 2022. Agrovision is looking to meet a healthy appetite for blueberries in the country; it says demand has increased 40% annually in the past five years.
Just Food sat down with Agrovision chief commercial officer Steve McVickers to discuss the company’s presence in China, its blueberry supply chain and trying to capture demand for healthier snacks.
Eszter Racz (ER): What sparked the move to grow blueberries in China?
Steve McVickers (SM): We had a great partnership with the local and national government agencies. They were really interested and intrigued by the goals of Agrovision, an overseas fruit producer to come to China and that resulted in them working with us to identify parcels of land that we could then work on. They [the government] have been very interested in land usage in China and introducing higher value crops. That was their motivation.
We generally like to build our own farms at Agrovision because then we can have them just how we want them. We have a blueprint that we are rolling out around the world. What you would see in Yunnan does not look so different to what you would see in Morocco, Egypt or Mexico. There are some local sort of climatic differences, but on the whole, we got our recipe, and we roll that recipe out around the world.
ER: Was the land you bought in Yunnan growing crops before becoming a blueberry farm?
SM: It was always a growing land but it was for low-value crops. Blueberries are much higher up the scale of value farming. It’s an intense work process to produce them, there is a lot more labour involved, which is great news for the locals. It also requires higher level of agronomic skills than a cereal crop, for example.
ER: Amid the growing demand for blueberries in China, is Agrovision going to keep expanding output in the country, or are you going to complement your local base with production from other countries?
SM: So Agrovision has been the number one importer into China for several years now from Peru. Peru is the largest blueberry importer source for China and we’ve been at the top of that ladder for a few years. If you look at the quantity that we import week by week, we immediately need to balance that up [from Peru] so we have that availability. The weekly demand for blueberries, wherever you go in the world is growing but it shows a stable growth, it doesn’t fluctuate.
Blueberry is not a seasonal crop, if you think about usage. Stable demand each week through the year is great for business. What we need to do now is satisfy that demand every week, not just some weeks. We have been really strong in the import season, from September to January [with blueberries grown in Peru] and now, with our sourcing strategy, we’re going to be able to carry on serving that demand by having the product domestically available from January onwards through into spring.
That’s really what we’re doing around the world. That’s why we have a farm in Morocco, Mexico and Egypt because we need production that follows on from Peru to ensure that consumers have access to our berries all the time. The consumer wants access to great blueberries all year around.
Our domestically produced fruit will have a sort of extra badge on it in China to say that this is local but otherwise we’re branding them the same. Most consumers don’t know that we change seasons in order to deliver the proposition through through the year. That’s our responsibility. Consumers just want to enjoy great, delicious berries day in day out.
ER: Why do you think demand for blueberries in China has been growing so significantly? Is it a result of general health awareness or more thanks to promotion from Agrovision or trade bodies?
SM: So, in the rest of the world, we generally use blueberry as an ingredient mix, whether that’s in your porridge or your muesli. China has leapfrogged that when tasty new genetic blueberries arrived in their market. They’ve been snacking it since the beginning. They eat them one by one. We go to great endeavours to deliver this consistency and this availability and, from a retailer’s perspective, it’s very easy to supply yourself with blueberries and put them on the shelf. I think that sort of great experience, combined with increasing availability, has driven itself.
I think branding also has played a part in that. It has allowed us to market the product in a more proactive way, particularly with the arrival of social media. We do a lot of work now on postings and customer awareness and really talking about how blueberry can sit in your lifestyle as a refreshing, nutritious snack.
And then there’s the last point, which is the phenomenon what we would really like to see around the rest of the world, which is that fruit is a gift in China. If you go to see friends or family over Chinese New Year, you will take some cherries. We’re now starting to see this in blueberries. We are now selling an increasing amount of boxes of four units. We see this trend online: you buy four, you have one for yourself for now, you take three home, you give one to your mother, and it’s considered a very generous, thoughtful gift, which is a relatively speaking, quite low budget.
ER: Will the blueberries grown in different countries vary in terms of flavour and texture because of the changes in climate and soil?
SM: No, because the techniques that we use to stabilise the characteristics of the varieties. There are different elements to what creates the characteristics of the fruit. There’s obviously the variety but then really it’s all then what work you do on top. We work hard to try to elevate the characteristics of the variety and then we seek to replicate that wherever we grow. If I showed you Agrovision berries, you might tell the difference but it wouldn’t be because of the province where we grew it. I think we’ve got really consistent with it. We’re certainly growing the same genetic variety in all of the locations.
The proximity to the market changes. It changes even from China to China as we transport from west China to the east coast of it where our markets are and, when we import from Peru, that takes even longer than that.
ER: What challenges do you face when branding fruit products? Is it different from how you brand confectionery or drinks? What makes Agrovision’s blueberries different for the consumer?
SM: I think it used to be different, if you go back a number of years, how the industry positioned itself. First of all, it was loose products, and then retailers said: ‘look, it would be a lot more convenient for us if you could do some packages for us instead.’ Now we are much, much closer to confectionery because what we’re selling now is an enjoyable, healthy, nutritious snack, which favourably competes with the confectionery aisle.
We’ve got ‘healthy and nutritious’ in our definition, which brings us a really exciting new proposition. I think the new branding work we’ve been doing in the last couple of years has really moved our product into this sector, this new category where the consumer says ‘I think of blueberries before as a healthy, nutritious, enjoyable snack.’
Before that, I used to put them in my porridge but these new varieties are delicious to eat one by one. This is a really exciting opportunity for consumers because blueberries now are an easy access to natural nutrition but the product needs to present itself like confectionery, rather than part of the fruit aisle.
ER: Blueberries are still more expensive than most confectionery options. How do you convince consumers to choose the more expensive fruit option?
SM: Fruit was always considered to be sort of a lower priced product, if you like, then other indulgence treats but, yes, a bar of chocolate perhaps is still a little cheaper. If you look at other indulgences, like a tub of guacamole or a tub of olives, we have a premium product and we’re competitive. It’s four ounces, 120 grams for a dose of healthy, nutritious snacking for less price than a tub of olives.
ER: How does Agrovision price its products in China and what do you invest in to bear down on prices?
SM: If we position our product as a healthy, nutritious snack, then we need to act and behave the same way as confectionery at the point of sale in retail. With snacking products, you would find very stable pricing, whereas fruit and vegetables we all know, sometimes come from shortages and then the price spikes.
What we can do and what we have been doing is that we fully own the entire supply chain. It’s our farms, it’s our production, therefore we can set our pricing. That’s what we’ve realised a price that the consumer is more than happy to pay. We see at that price level that the business is growing, if we are able to stabilise the price.
We’ve become less susceptible to traditional spikes and flows of business and our retail partners really like this strategy. Nobody wants to have fluctuations in price because it destabilises production. We want people to enjoy the product all the time.
If you go back several years, we didn’t understand where our products were going because it was travelling down a very traditional supply chain, and we would lose identity with it. That’s all changed now and we’re much more connected with our retailing partners, whether that’s a big box retailer, a supermarket or local fruit shops where still a lot of our products are sold.
People are always interested in where their food comes from, partly from a food safety aspect, but also from intrigue, right? The fact that some of our berries are grown in Peru is a story in itself that is interesting, as it’s an incredibly beautiful place. We have this extra level of consumer interest, which you wouldn’t necessarily get around your chocolate bar, where the consumer can lean in and enjoy understanding where their product has come from. You see that around a lot, that’s a global consumer trend.
JF: What plans do you have to expand your range of products further?
SM: We are growing in our category but we are specialist growers focusing on a healthy snacking market, so other products that naturally sit in there are the work we are doing now, like developing new varieties, and raspberry, blackberry and strawberry as a product. It’s because there’s an obvious synergy from the grower, the supply chain and retailer perspective in this innovation. This market is enormous, so I think we have a tremendous opportunity to focus on that category. There’s a lot of work to do and, for now, that’s where we concentrate, making that category a success.
