Health and safety standards, speed, safety and consistency in the delivery of high quality fruits constitute the philosophy of Froutofarm.
Mr. Tsartsarakis, what's your philosophy regarding the quality?
FROUTOFARM started a dynamic course in 2018, setting high goals for development by including a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in its portofolio. The need for packaging that meets health and safety standards, high quality products, speed, safety and consistency in the delivery of products showed the way to obtain a series of certifications from international agencies (GLOBAL GAP, GRASP, etc.) - in parallel by observing strict hygiene conditions throughout the supply chain from the field to the shelves of our customers. The selected products that we receive from our producers are transported in a short time after harvesting to the FROUTOFARM facilities, where additional quality control is carried out. There it takes place standardization in all types of packaging based on the requirements of our customers (micro-packaging in net, cup, carton etc.) and the products are placed in special chambers under ideal conditions with the aim of ensuring excellent quality and unquestionable freshness.
What activities does Froutofarm develop in kiwifruit market?
One of its most important products is the kiwi, which is estimated for the current year to exceed 500 tons. It concerns the Tsechelides and Hayward varieties, while all production is certified according to GLOBAL GAP and GRASP and the management and storage of the fruits is carried out in proprietary cold rooms in ideal conditions that help the kiwi to keep its quality characteristics for a long time.
What should someone who wants to import Greek Kiwis know?
Greece ranks among the top 3 countries in the world in kiwifruit production. Almost all of the production concerns the Hayward variety and most of it comes from Pella, Pieria, Thessaly, Kavala and Arta. The biggest advantage of the Greek kiwifruit is that it can withstand long storage conditions and long time transport. In this way Greek Kiwis have become famous worldwide and are exported to all five continents.
What other fruits do you deal with and what your clients can expect for the spring and summer season?
We master in stone fruits and apricots in particular. This is our core business. This year, weather allowed, we are expecting to double our quantities and triple our producers, with whom we seek to have a close cooperation throughout the year. This is important for us as it allows us to observe closely the cultivation from flowering to harvest. At the same time we also offer instructions to producers in the context of contract farming and the global gap, which contributes the most to the quality of the final product. Furthermore, it is important for that to have a cold winter, so as to complete the necessary cold hours for the trees and a less rainy May and June compared to last year. Even so, with our new state of the art sorting and calibrating machine which is equipped with a quality screening system we will be able to guarantee top quality and supply the best stone fruits to our partners. We start with cherries early May, continue later during the month first the first apricots Mogador and Pricia quality and finish mid of September. Of course other varieties such as Lady Cot and Farbaly follow which also have a prominent position in exports due to their special characteristics. Nectarines and peaches appear in June until about begging of September. Same for plums. More generally, regarding stone fruits, our competitive advantage is that we can serve our customers from May till end of September, consistently offering quality fruits of all modern varieties, meeting the needs of the market throughout the season. We also focus at the end of the summer to figs Black Mission and prepare for Crimson and Sultana variety of grapes in September.
Would you like to share with our readers the aims of your company for the next season? Do you prepare new products or new investments?
We are focused on maintaining our main products, increase our producers and volumes, but explore potential with your fruits and vegetables as well. Froutofarm will keep expanding the assortment to offer availability year round. To pursue that we have invested to a new modern production area, where construction is already ongoing, next to our existing ones, with more cold chambers and state of the art sorting and packaging machineries. These new facilities combined with the new state-of the art sorting lines which will be in operation this May, will allow us to manage more fruits and have incomparable advantages in terms of the quality which is also the goal for us and our customers.