Part
01
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Part
01
Fruits and Vegetables Purchasing: Logistics + Packaging
Detailed insights surrounding purchasing departments at companies in the fresh fruits and vegetables industry revolve around the purchase of packaging materials to ensure freshness of produce, the engagement with logistics providers to provide a timely delivery, and the task of a purchasing manager to oversee the budgets and the fresh produce procurement process.
Purchasing Process
- When procuring logistics services to transport fruits and vegetables, the cost of delivering fruits to packaging centers should be taken into account.
- The logistics cost of returning these crates should also be factored in.
- Companies should also make sure that they procure logistics services that are associated with ensuring that products are refrigerated and stored properly.
- Other logistics services and costs that need to be procured by fruit and vegetable businesses include transportation, chests to contain the fruits, warehouse logistics, storage security, and other transport and storage expenses.
- Companies will also need to acquire the services of a refrigerated transport provider to ensure the freshness of fruits and vegetables.
- Additionally, they should ensure that they obtain packaging materials that can shield fresh produce from mechanical damages.
- Companies involved in the fruits and vegetables industry must employ experts that are knowledgeable in logistics.
- They should engage providers that can offer swift transport of these goods.
- Companies should also engage the services of their providers to guarantee the "storage, preparation for packaging, and delivery to the recipient."
General Purchases at Production Centers
- Purchasing departments for production companies should make certain they have a sufficient supply of packaging materials to meet the business goals of the company.
- Purchasing departments typically do not have leeway to seek new suppliers as this will typically result in additional efforts to test the services and products of those vendors.
- Furthermore, introducing a new supplier will usually entail some downtime to ensure that the new vendor's product or service will not cause concerns in the production environment.
- However, this concern can be mitigated by employing an expert that can optimize the packaging process in production.
- The specialist can collaborate with purchasing departments to effectively incorporate superior and more cost-efficient packaging products into the operation.
- During a Senate conference on fruits and vegetables operations in Poland, the speakers mentioned that the absence of purchasing groups in the country are causing some logistics and trade issues when exporting fruits.
Purchasing Manager Role at Materne (Polish Company)
- Based on the profile of a purchasing manager at Materne Poland, a fruit purchasing company, the following are the typical responsibilities:
- The purchasing manager is responsible for deploying budgets that are intended for purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables.
- They also analyze the fruit and vegetable market for several years.
- They are responsible for drafting a report on fresh fruit purchases.
- Furthermore, they are in charge of finalizing contracts with fresh fruit vendors.
- Also, they train vendors on the process.
- Finally, they collaborate in the "field of economy and marketing of packaging in the season."
Company Purchasing Case Studies
Materne
- When arranging the necessary logistics to deliver its fruits, the company assures optimal time of transport and the availability of cold room services to preserve the freshness of the produce.
- The company's employees also make certain that the loading and delivery process is sufficient to ensure product quality.
Greenyard Fresh
- Greenyard Fresh taps its global network of logistics providers to deliver fresh produce to its customers.
- The company uses the logistics to source products for areas that are the closest to its consumers.
- The company also values its supplier relationships with these providers and considers them to be key partners in delivering its fresh products.
Global Fruit
- Global Fruit aims to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables by using quality packaging materials.
- The company also collaborates with multiple logistics providers and cold storage vendors to ensure the timely shipment of fresh produce.
- Moreover, it assures buyers that it has packaging materials that can meet the requirements of their customers.
The Fruit Group
- The Fruit Group has procured two machines to pack their apples.
- They also secured storage facilities to store fresh fruits.
Research Strategy:
To find detailed insights surrounding purchasing departments at companies in the fresh fruits and vegetables industry, specifically regarding the purchasing of logistics services and packaging in Poland, we looked through different industry-related publications and business reports in the country. However, this approach only revealed general supply chain processes of the companies that are applicable for all industries and not specific to fresh fruits and vegetables.
Next, we scanned through the websites and official reports of various fruit and vegetable producers/companies in Poland such as Materne, Rajpol Sp, Skowronki Group, Global Fruit, Fruit Group Sp, Greenyard, and others. We hoped to find some insights on their purchasing operations. Based on this search, we found some details on how some of their purchasing departments operate. However, the details were very high-level and not comprehensive. There also limited details on the decision-making process at these companies.
Additionally, we tried searching for purchasing-related job titles on career sites such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. to see if the job descriptions offered some details on the decision makers of purchasing organizations at beverage companies. However, the job titles we found were highly fragmented and did not provide comprehensive data to derive the operations and decision-making process of purchasing organizations in Poland.
We also expanded our search to encompass all industries in Poland to determine how their purchasing operations work and how decisions are conducted. Though we found some fragmented details on purchasing operations in Poland in general, we could not find any comprehensive processes on purchasing operations and the decision-making process, possibly due to the internal nature of this information.
We decided to extract some snippets of helpful details from all our search efforts to offer a partial picture of purchasing department operations and the decision-making process in Poland's fruits and vegetables sector and industries in general.