The UAE is a very exciting market, where the demand for fruit and vegetables is huge. The UAE residents and its visitors love fresh produce, and that is why a really wide variety is available; all the best products that you would find in Europe, you will find here in the UAE food outlets.
This makes it very appealing for a lot of suppliers to try and make a ‘fast buck’, but there is a real lack of experience and limited knowledge of the products that the chefs and F&B managers require. It tends to be a purely trading environment, which is fine as this makes the world go round. However, fruit and vegetables are very important to every meal, and a highly sensitive part of the food industry. You have to learn over years and years, that the whole process needs to be followed properly; picking, packing, storage. It all has to be done in the right way to enable the best quality and freshness. Quality doesn’t work for our customers without freshness and consistently great service levels.
I have spent the last 12 months learning about the UAE market. Our company is a family owned business, a third-generation fruit and vegetables grower that has been in operation for over 40 years. It supplies the largest customers in Europe, and has enormous experience of everything to do with fruit and vegetables. We specialise in transporting highly sensitive produce long distances, either by sea or air. We have learnt over time how to prepare the products in the right way for different environments, and have introduced brand new packaging for sea freight which delivers much improved freshness.
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One of the huge differences here versus Spain is obviously the really aggressive environment for fruit and vegetables. You would never see fruit and vegetables outside a cold store environment in Europe, but it is not uncommon here to see produce sitting outside in 40°C between June to September. It has a massive effect on the products the chefs have to use. As soon as you break the ‘cool chain’ you trigger the beginning of the end of the product’s shelf life.
Back in Spain, we are looking at different methods as well as the traditional ones to manage the supply chain. Grading and sorting of produce is key, as waste levels can be extortionate after two weeks travelling by sea. Once it arrives, it is vital not to waste the good work undertaken in Spain, and we have to manage the cool chain seamlessly. This is where our partners 4 Corners come in.
We like to give all of our products a passport too — that is why labelling is so important. When done properly it is one of the best methods of product traceability. It enables us to be able to tell where our products have come from and when, if any references are required.
Confidence in food safety is key, we often see Indian grapes sold as Italian for instance, as there is not the knowledge, proper labelling or expertise to be able to check the products. This is worrying from an industry viewpoint as it highly unethical. It is key to profile projects such as the one we are doing to try and encourage the market to evolve away from this type of behaviour. We would expect our onions, for example, to have the transparency to be checked as to where they are grown, in what type of soil etc. I worry greatly about this massive lack of traceability in the UAE market. Not having guarantees is dangerous. That is why it is important we undertake a thorough job before launching into foodservice produce distribution.
All the information that we attain from Michael’s internship will enable us to shape the best possible model for fresh produce distribution in the foodservice channel. To make this work, we will need to get the model as close to perfect from the start. Is this a challenge? Of course, when a product is travelling thousands of miles in variable conditions. But this is what we do and this is why we are here in this very exciting market. We love it!
Jose Dolz is Grupocatala’s Dubai-based Middle East manager with over 15 years’ experience in the F&V market. Michael Oleynikov is a student at the Emirates Academy of Hospitality. His six month internship is sponsored by food service experts 4 Corners General Trading LLC and Spanish F&V producer Grupocatala.
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