The business process

Production and Purchasing

In order to sell the very best fruit in Russia it is necessary to buy the very best fruit or cultivate it yourself. JFC Group has a great deal of experience in the international fruit market and is a significant player. Our reputation as a large and reliable purchaser makes it possible for the Group to sign beneficial contracts and provide the Russian market with highest quality fruit.

Currently JFC has permanent suppliers in Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Costa Rica and the USA.

In addition, from 2004, the Group began to acquire its own banana plantations in Ecuador and Costa Rica. By controlling production we can optimise the cost of bananas as well as monitoring their quality. Russian consumers are well known for demanding high quality bananas so the Group’s plantation in Ecuador prides itself on being more carefully managed than other plantations in the country. The Group currently manages 3000 hectares of plantation in Ecuador and almost 250 hectares in Costa Rica. Our plantations provide up to 6.5 million banana boxes per year, or up to 25% of the bananas sold by the Group. The Group’s strategic plan includes further increase in the size of its own plantations.

Logistics

Anyone who deals with food products knows how difficult transportation can be. Fruit are probably the most capricious of all products. Each kind of fruit requires its own special transportation and storage conditions. In order to make certain that high quality fruit finds its way onto Russian tables we control all stages of the fruit’s journey from plantation to shop shelves.

We use a fleet of 11 ships for sea transportation. Our ships are ice class, which enables them to make journeys to Saint Petersburg’s port all year round. Deliveries arrive at the port of Saint Petersburg every two weeks.

Delivery of fruit to Saint Petersburg port is carried out using articulated lorries consisting of Mercedes-Benz Actros trucks and Lamberet Semifrigo semi-trailer refrigerators. The company owns 80 such articulated lorries.

At the moment the company is implementing a program to start using containers for fruit transportation. By using containers it is possible to improve control over transport conditions and also raise the speed and convenience of loading and unloading fruit. Containers also allow us to deliver to Russia by sea small consignments of especially delicate exotic fruit. In 2007 the Group rented 430 containers with temperature controlled storage.

By using modern technology and a smooth running logistics management system JFC Group can guarantee the supply of high quality fruit onto the Russian market all year round.

Presale preparation, distribution and sale

JFC Group uses a network of specialised fruit terminals in order to guarantee constant supply of fruit to consumers across the whole of Russia. The fruit are sorted, packed and ripened in the terminals. Currently the Group manages tens of terminals in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Ekaterinburg. Having our own terminals enables us to guarantee ideal regular deliveries to our most sensitive clients — retail chains.

We also take into account the fact that some of our clients need time to get the fruit to the consumer, so we give them the opportunity to select the level of ripeness of the fruit. The group’s terminals are equipped with modern gas chambers which make it possible for the fruit to reach full ripeness not in the warehouse or en route but on the shop shelves and in the consumer’s fruit bowl

Another growing business area is selling fruit in foreign markets. At the moment the Group sells bananas to countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey, Romania, Montenegro, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. 25% of the Group’s bananas are sold in these countries. We are proud that the high quality of our fruit and our excellent reputation enables us to compete equally with leading international fruit corporations.