|
|
We our committed to supplying our customers with the highest quality products and expanding our business by developing innovative and diverse products for new and emerging markets throughout the world.Providing ‘Fresh from Harvest’ fruits
A lot of care and attention goes in to growing our fruit and our team of agronomists are always on hand to provide regular training and support to ensure that good agricultural practices are always adopted by our farmers.
So many of the fruits available to buy in our supermarkets and green-grocers fail to reach the quality we should expect and this is very often because they are shipped over long periods of time and handled in a way which does not respect their natural condition.
We want all our customers to be able to experience the taste of natural, sun-ripened fruit as if it were just harvested from the farm; so we work hard to produce fruits of optimal flavour and appearance and then handle them in a way which preserves these qualities right up until they are delivered to the customer.
We do this by focusing on providing fruits that are ‘Fresh from harvest’, working closely with our logistics partners to manage our supply chain and investing in cutting-edge research and new product development.
Our fresh-from-harvest fruits are harvested when ripe, cut and packed while fresh and then delivered to our customers from soil to shelf within forty-eight hours. This ensures that we can preserve as much of the fresh picked flavour as possible without adding any chemicals or preservatives.Managing our supply chain
Blue Skies operates a service which keeps our products at or below 5 degrees Celsius throughout the entire supply chain. We do this with the use of refrigerated transport, airport temperature controlled holding facilities, temperature controlled handling centres in all major European cities and the use of carefully tested thermal insulation packaging.
We have a trained team of Quality Assurance staff who see the product through the factory and accompany the goods to the airport, within 100 metres of the aircraft. In London, Blue Skies’ representatives meet the consignment and test it to ensure that quality standards are maintained.
Supervisors are at every critical point of the journey tracking progress and reporting back to the Operations Rooms at each of our factories and in Europe.Research & Development
New Product Development (NPD) is of great importance to the growth of Blue Skies and we are committed to finding ways of increasing the variety and longevity of our products without compromising on quality.
In the UK and at each of our sites we have a dedicated team of staff responsible for developing and realising new product ideas in response to ever changing markets. It is our constant aim to find new and exciting products so as to remain ahead of the market in terms of both quality and innovation whilst always giving the country of origin the benefit of ‘adding the value’.Ensuring traceability
Knowing where our fruit comes from is one of the best ways that we can ensure that it reaches the highest standards of quality. At each of our sites we have a full time team of agronomists whose job it is to work with our farmers to make sure our standards are met. In fact we were the first company in the world to achieve EurepGAP certification (now GlobalGap) for a group of farmers in Africa. This is an organisation which sets standards for safe and sustainable agriculture around the world.
We are also audited for Fairtrade, British Retail Consortium (BRC), International Food Standard (IFS), Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) and we are certified as ‘Ethical Trade Organic’ by the Soil Association.
In 2007 we launched an online traceability system called ‘Caretrace’ to allow our customers to find out more about where our fruit comes from. Caretrace was launched in partnership with Waitrose and enables users to trace their product all the way back to the farmer. You can watch videos, view maps and look at photographs of your farmer. To find out more, go to www.caretrace.com.
|
|