Exciting News: Clarifruit has Rebranded to Clarifresh!

July 8, 2024

Cutting Oversupply Through Produce Quality Control 

  • Quality Control App
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Retailers and growers speaking different languages is one of the main drivers of mismatch and waste across the fresh produce supply chain – and one of the most problematic effects is oversupply.

When retailers don’t forecast accurately, this can lead to an oversupply of produce, which growers cannot sell. The result is waste, crippling loss for growers, and the souring of otherwise productive relationships within the produce industry.

In this article, we’re taking a look at what causes oversupply, and how a single, unified, data-driven language can help to streamline the way businesses communicate and collaborate.

What Causes the Oversupply of Fruits and Vegetables?

The term “oversupply” can refer to a wide range of scenarios, for example: favorable weather conditions can lead to a surplus of a certain crop, or inadequate storage conditions may lead to an oversupply situation, as produce has to be sold quickly before it spoils.

Here, we’re focusing narrowly on oversupply in the relationship between growers and retailers. In simple terms, whenever producers send more produce than a supermarket or retailer needs, the result is oversupply. 

This is a serious problem for a number of reasons:

  • It leads to waste, as the grower can’t take the produce back, and the retailer can’t sell it
  • Someone takes an economic hit: this could be the grower, the retailer, or both
  • Legal disputes can arise, which can impact the availability of produce in future

Oversupply in Action: Australian Farmers Under Pressure

A recent report from Australia shows just how dangerous these disputes can be for the supply chain, and the produce industry at large. 

  • Retailers provide “forecast” volumes with no obligation to purchase the full amount.
  • Farmers often only sell about 50% of the forecasted volume, leading to surplus and waste.
  • Surplus crops flood the market, decreasing prices and increasing financial pressure on farmers.
  • About 34% of farmers consider leaving the industry due to these pressures.

This is a critical problem for the industry, and it has nothing to do with fruit quality or food safety. And while retailers usually bear the brunt of the cost of food waste, here we see a case in which it’s growers who are taking the fall.

The interesting question isn’t “who is to blame?”, but “how do we prevent this from happening so that everybody wins?”.

Aligning Expectations & Interest Through Fresh Produce Quality Control

Getting growers and retailers on the same page calls for a proactive approach to produce quality control: removing guesswork and human error, and replacing them with sound data.

Here’s how Clarifresh’s automated produce quality control platform helps to align growers and retailers to minimize waste and build strong collaborative relationships that benefit the industry and its customers. 

Collaborative Planning Between Retailers and Growers

Clarifresh can enable more transparent and collaborative planning between farmers and retailers. With shared access to quality data, both parties can make better-informed decisions about the quantities and timing of produce shipments, reducing the likelihood of oversupply.

Using Historical Trends & Data to Inform Future Decisions

In addition to providing an always-accurate picture of produce quality right now, Clarifresh structures data in a way that makes it easy to understand historical trends. By using Big Data capabilities in this way, companies can identify anomalies, compare current performance to established baselines, and prioritize particularly lucrative relationships.

1. Accurate Forecasting and Planning

By providing precise quality data and real-time insights into the condition of the produce, Clarifresh can help farmers and retailers better align their supply with actual demand. This can reduce the likelihood of overproducing or oversupplying produce that might not be needed.

2. Improved Harvest Timing

Clarifresh’s tools can help farmers determine the optimal harvest time, ensuring that produce is picked at its peak quality and sent to market when it’s most likely to meet demand. This can prevent the premature or delayed harvesting that contributes to oversupply.

3. Enhanced Market Intelligence

With comprehensive data on produce quality across different regions and times, Clarifresh can help companies to predict market trends and demand patterns more accurately. For growers, this intelligence can inform planting and harvesting decisions to better match supply with anticipated demand. For retailers, this capability means more precise demand forecasting for specific products, which helps them to rightsize their orders from growers to minimize oversupply.

Rightsizing Every Consignment With Clarifresh

The problem of oversupply in the fresh produce industry is notoriously hard to solve – and it’s a major driver of waste. At Clarifresh , we have built the first AI-powered quality control platform exclusively for this supply chain, empowering all stakeholders to collaborate with full transparency and accuracy.

Schedule a call with our team to learn more about how Clarifresh could help your organization streamline operations and improve commercial relationships for a greener, more equitable future.

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