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D erryfast Produce was
Page 52
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set up to market and deliver fruit and vegetables from its home patch in the Vale of Evesham, Worcestershire, but it now han dles produce from all over Europe. Its success is based on meeting the tough handling and delivery requirements of the catering trade.
Operations director Peter Osborne says: "We are dealing with outlets that specialise in slicing and dicing fruit and veg and they need deliveries throughout the night and day on very tight timescales. Sometimes we might have 26 pallets to deliver and sometimes one pallet so we have to have the flexibility in our fleet to deliver to these people."
To handle such varying requirements, the company employs a night-time transport manager and runs everything from reefer vans to 38-tanners.
Ferryfast is based in Honeybourne, near Evesham. It was founded in 1978 by Osborne's two fellow directors, Bob Byrd and Nick Gorin, who had previously merged their market gardening businesses. They realised that a separate business could provide marketing and delivery services for other local growers as well as themselves. Ferryfast now has a fleet of 27 trucks and six vans which carry everything from apples and pears to avocados and sweet potatoes. A Cornish depot handles mainly vegetables and flowers. It also serves as the link with Continental growers, which has developed over the past three years. This involves using the depots of two French hauliers to import produce to the UK. This expansion has helped to ensure a fairly even spread of work throughout the year
Local competition
The company's growth has partly been achieved by the acquisition of three local transport operators but local competition remains as tough as ever. Osborne says this is because improvements to the national road network mean that being in the heart of a fruit and vegetable growing area is no longer the advantage it was in the past.
He says that in order to compete, the company is now offering services such as quality control at no extra cost: "We are not the
biggest player in the transport market for fruit and veg but a lot of smaller companies don't do a nationwide service like us. We are delivering up into Scotland and to Cornwall six nights a week."
Ferryfast employs 25 full-time and it part-time drivers and the company is working hard to avoid any shortfall in numbers in the future. In the past 12 months, we have been training our drivers up through Class 2 to Class i and we're taking on people who have no experience at all so that they can get their Class 2 licence," says Osborne. "We have some very experienced drivers who have been with us for many years but drivers are in very short supply in this area."
The company has just bought a house so that drivers recruited from other parts of the country can stay locally when on duty. Vehicles are purchased very much with the comfort of drivers in mind. "We like to try and keep them happy," says Osborne, who
joined the company 14 years a "Most drivers prefer to be driv something bigger and better, ; as decent drivers are so few z far between, we give them w they prefer to drive."
Over the past three ye Ferryfast's buying policy changed in favour of new rat than two or three year-old fru( "The reason for that is that th are lower maintenance costs a because we are delivering for of other customers, we have k seen to be turning up with right image and the right vers," says Osborne.
He adds that the company n a mixture of reefer curtainsk and box body trailers to meet differing handling requireme of various customers. Most of work is kept in-house becaus is so specialist.
World war
Ferryfast moved to a fort Second World War airf hangar in 19 93 on a 'temper basis. Osborne says that for business to really take off it r needs modern, purpose-b storage facilities: "The mixtur produce we handle is very g: and to stay competitive in 1 market, you need to be imp] ing your services all the time move to /2.5m premises on edge of Evesham is planned, negotiations with the local co cil over planning permiss have yet to be concluded.