Why quality, consistency, innovation and technology are the keys to success for national fruit distributor, Worldwide Fruit
Worldwide Fruit Ltd (Worldwide Fruit) is an international fruit marketing and distribution company supplying UK retailers and wholesalers with apples, pears, avocados, stone fruits, and fruit baskets. The company works with suppliers from around the globe and strives to be its customers’ first choice.
Worldwide Fruit is a joint venture, 50 percent owned by Fruition PO (Fruition) and 50 percent owned by Turners and Growers Global (T&G). Fruition PO comprises 29 British growers, some of which are fourth or fifth generation, it boasts extensive industry knowledge and produces around 28 percent of the UK’s domestic apple and pear crop, as well as substantial volumes of stone and soft fruits. 
T&G is one of the most recognized fruit brands in the world and is a major producer and supplier of apples to global markets. T&G has a strong focus on intellectual property development and commercialization across the produce sector. As part of its strategy, T&G has invested in leading breeding programs around the world, providing Worldwide Fruit with exclusive access to new and exciting fruit varieties, as well as exclusive marketing rights to Jazz™ and Envy™ apples.
Improved product consistency
As one of UK’s first suppliers to install Softripe®, a state-of-the-art ripening system, Worldwide Fruit offers strategic ripening services that ensure consistency in quality and availability of its supply. However, with the principle of continuous improvement at its core, the company never rests and instead constantly seeks opportunities for improvement. To learn more about this philosophy, we sit down with Tony Harding, Procurement and Technical Director; Hannah Mcllfatrick, Commercial Director; and Willie Wood, Head of Technical.
“The company was formed in 2000 and has evolved over time, with our core product areas now being apple, pear, avocado, stonefruit and fruit baskets,” Tony opens. “Our depth on UK top fruit, access to club varieties, our strength in supply chain partnerships and our ripening expertise means we have a diverse customer range across retail, food service and wholesale.
“In 2007, we moved to a purpose-built facility on Apple Way in Spalding, Lincolnshire, where we’ve created a center of excellence for our ripening and value-added services. We specialize in ripening avocados, pears, and stone fruits to ‘ready to eat’ specifications for a range of UK retailers. We then dispatch the ripening products directly into the customer depots. In 2020 we installed the Softripe ripening system at Apple Way, an innovative software for ripening fruit using a controlled atmosphere system.
“Softripe was a game-changer for the UK avocado market,” he states. “Although there had been a small amount of activity in ripening bananas, we were the first company in the UK to use such software on avocados. Today, 100 percent of our avocado offering is ripened using the Softripe system, which provides us with a point of difference when it comes to quality and extended shelf life. Our customer complaint levels have significantly reduced, and we are delivering improved product consistency.”
Hannah confirms: “Softripe leads to increased customer satisfaction, as we can be confident in not only the quality, but also the readiness of our products. Consumers get exactly what they’re expecting with no disappointments like hard fruit or inconsistency. Part of our direction of travel is continuous improvement, so despite embedding Softripe into our process, we’re constantly evaluating the recipes and processes to ensure we’re delivering an improved service or product.”
Disrupting the market
As our conversation turns to the company’s extensive supply chain, Tony offers an interesting insight: “Having T&G and Fruition as shareholders means we are vertically integrated into their production processes, providing us with greater visibility of the end-to-end supply chain. We also deal with around 85 strategic supply partners from around the world, with many of these relationships dating back over 25 years. We approach our suppliers as partners, fostering strong relationships that prioritize trust and mutual success.”
Willie elaborates: “My team oversees our multifunctional supply scorecard process, ‘protect the future,’ which looks at several aspects of our suppliers from performance and quality to ethical sourcing and sustainability. The annual, resilience-based measurement process looks at environmental, ethical, and social dimensions to help us drive best practices across the supply chain. It helps us to explore the resiliency of our overall supply chain and assess how we align with the requirements and expectations of UK consumers. While we, of course, ensure our suppliers meet industry-specific standards and certifications, we go beyond these measures to gain a deeper understanding of how our risk is being managed, mitigated, and adapted.
“With the climate crisis and several political and economic challenges facing growers, producers, exporters, and shippers, we’re in a complex market, and we often break it down into segments to understand the supplier’s priority. Whether it’s ethics or resiliency, we work collaboratively with suppliers to help them improve their scorecard performance. Over the years, we’ve come to recognize high-risk countries, regions, or suppliers, which helps us quickly identify those suppliers that will require enhanced due diligence.
“Fundamentally, our customers want to know how we’re making sourcing decisions, and our scorecard process is making such visibility possible,” he continues. “However, our above-and-beyond supply chain practices are not only driven by market requirements, but also by our own desire to be our customers’ first choice.”
With products sourced from more than 30 countries, inbound measurement is crucial to ensure quality and consistency. “We’ve partnered with Clarifruit to automate our quality control processes,” Willie reveals. “By implementing smart camera vision technology with AI, we’ve digitized a previously manual process that is already achieving greater accuracy.”
Tony adds: “We’ve also installed Redzone into the packhouse, an operational platform that sits within our recording systems to measure operational effectiveness. This tool offers greater connectivity across the business and brings teams together while finding opportunities for improvement or driving solutions across several functions.”
Having alluded to the company’s sustainability commitments within the supply chain, Willie is keen to share initiatives beyond the supply chain. “We’re aiming to be Net Zero across Scopes 1 and 2 by 2040, with a 42 percent emissions reduction due by 2030,” he states. “For our growing activities within Scopes 1 and 3, we’re aiming to achieve a 30 percent emissions reduction by 2030 and Net Zero by 2035. On non-growing Scope 3, we’re hoping to have 90 percent of our suppliers signed up to science-based targets by 2027. We’re in a fantastic position to be able to supply clients with primary data around carbon emissions, but we’re continuously working behind the scenes to improve how we measure and manage several data points.”
Customers’ first choice
As Worldwide Fruit looks to the future, Hannah shares her outlook on several market changes. “Brands are becoming increasingly important within the fruit market and can deliver a fantastic product to the consumer while simultaneously protecting the interests of growers if the product quality hits the mark,” she proffers. “We’re fortunate to have exclusive UK marketing rights for some of the most renowned fruit brands such as Jazz™, which is the third, fourth, or fifth most popular variety in the UK depending on season conditions and product availability.
“As we actively look to expand our brand portfolio, we’re involved with interesting global marketing committees to gain early insights into the evolution of brands and we’re working with our strategic partners, for example Opera & VOG in Italy, to drive supply forward with great brands and varieties. These companies specifically are leading the space with disruptive and innovative products and brands.
“Fruit is a mature market, especially apples, so we’re aiming to disrupt traditions with innovative products,” Hannah shares. “We’re currently supplying several UK retailers with Kissabel® apples until February, for instance, which is a new type of apple with red, orange, or yellow skin, but red flesh inside. It’s our fourth year supplying Kissabel® apples to the UK market, but this year, we have a dedicated marketing campaign to capture the imagination of a younger target audience. The unique, pinky-red flesh means the apples interact well on social media channels and make a traditional product market fun again!”
Tony concludes: “2024 has been a year of consolidating the business performance and doing the basics well. We are well placed as we head into 2025 and will use the platform from 2024 to build momentum and push on with our business priorities. The focus will be on 100 percent availability underpinned through supply chain resilience and our continuous improvement mindset to remain our customers’ first choice.”