Strawberry Growing in the UK: Expand or Optimise?

Matt Locker, Soft Fruit Direct and Paul Rooimans, YieldComputer

In the soft fruit business, as in most others, there is an almost instinctive drive for growth. It is worthwhile, however, to pause for a moment and consider the best route to increased profitability. Growth is very gratifying but, in the end, what really matters is bottom line results.

Paul Rooimans of YieldComputer and Matt Locker of SoftFruit Direct met in 2022 at a CxO Tech Talk webinar promoted by YieldComputer on the topic of soft fruit yield forecasting. They quickly discovered they shared a passion for sustainable profit.

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Locker attended the seminar at the suggestion of one of the growers he represents, and was looking for ways of increasing profits from the commercialization of strawberries in the UK. Rooimans was looking for strategic partners to further development and live testing of the solution created by YieldComputer in Europe. Both had the same ambition of making the future of the soft fruit industry and its growers more secure and sustainable.

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... large volumes of strawberries were either going unsold or were going straight into the freezer at prices less than 25% of those that would have normally been expected

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Recently in the UK, strawberry prices have declined significantly, primarily as a result of:

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✅ Reduced consumption in July 2022, when it is estimated that 19 million people left the UK to catch up on holidays in the sun that they had been unable to take during the Covid restrictions.

✅ Increased costs for growers compounded by labour shortages

✅ Inaccurate forecasting, exacerbated by a heatwave, leading to poor sales

✅ Increased cost of living making consumers less likely to buy strawberries

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The overall result was that the market, with around 90,000 tonnes of strawberry production, was saturated. This meant that large volumes of strawberries were either going unsold or were going straight into the freezer at prices less than 25% of those that would have normally been expected. The export market did little to help because of the short shelf life of the fruit and, of course, the complications caused by Brexit.

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The impact on growers was significant. They found themselves facing the question of whether they should continue to invest ingrowth and higher output or turn to consolidation and optimization. Which strategy would make their businesses more sustainable – and more profitable – in the future? These questions were ongoing topics of discussion in the meetings between Rooimans and Locker, and between Locker and the network of growers here presents.

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gaining greater control of the situation was crucial

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All agreed that gaining greater control of the situation was crucial. In the UK, temperatures are peaking more often, gas prices are already challenging and are set to increase further, and yield forecasting is often far from accurate. These factors combine to produce periodic shortages and gluts, both of which create problems for growers and reduce their profitability.

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After considering these issues, Locker decided that the solution offered by YieldComputer had the potential to provide more accurate weekly forecasts. The growers he represents agreed and, in June 2022, he visited YieldComputer’s offices in Eindhoven to find out more about the company, its mission, its level of competence and way it works with its customers.

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the solution offered by YieldComputer had the potential to provide more accurate weekly forecasts

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The visit proved to be convincing and, in July, a360-degree scan, which is at the heart of YieldComputer’s forecasting techniques, was carried out to gain an understanding of Soft Fruit Direct’s ecosystem and forecasting workflow, along with an insight into the challenges faced by the company’s grower management team.

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This resulted in a clear implementation strategy to optimize the business, with realistic milestones. YieldComputer's SmartCropCams went into the New Forest Fruit field to gather data and images about the upcoming crop so that the computer models could be fine-tuned to suit local conditions. This baseline measurement also allows YieldComputer to travel back in time using data from the entire season so that the forecasting performance over the season can be evaluated in detail.

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The digital transformation of the Soft Fruit Direct ecosystem starts at the level of the plants in the field and continues seamlessly up to the level of the sales dashboard. At the operational level, each grower has their own dashboard where they can approve and consolidate the numbers they send to the sales dashboard. Data used by the new system includes weather, crop profiles, historical information and outlook, all of which are intelligently combined to help Soft Fruit Direct to achieve better, more profitable sales performance.

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data used includes weather, crop profiles, historical information and outlook, all of which are intelligently combined

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Locker is seeing these benefits:

✅ real time insights into expected volumes at field level

✅ complete data to support forecasts

✅ benchmarking between growers

✅ high quality in-depth conversations about forecasts, instead of needing to chase growers for information

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Locker is convinced that this is the way forward for growers to optimize their business. His ambition is to use optimized intelligent techniques that will enable his growers to become more secure and sustainable. Those interested in joining his network of growers can contact him by email at matt@softfruitdirect.co.uk.

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Rooimans (prooimans@yieldcomputer.com) agrees that this is the way forward, noting that YieldComputer is number one in yield forecasting as the company works with crop images and other data, processed by AI technology and organized as a complete ecosystem which has proven itself in the Netherlands, the UK and Spain.

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YieldComputer’s mission is to make the soft fruit industry more sustainable by providing accurate yield forecasts that help growers to make the right business decisions and ultimately reduce food waste along with carbon footprint, while boosting profitability.

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