Eighteen farms, one grading standard
Our outgrower network did not start as a social programme. It started because a buyer asked for more fruit than we could grow.
Written by Sales & Partnerships
A distributor asked us for four times the volume we had on the trees. We could have said no, or we could have looked over the fence.
The problem was never the growing
The farms around us grow perfectly good fruit. What they did not have was a way to prove it was consistent: no grading, no records, and no buyer willing to take a chance on an unknown block.
So we took the grading on. Their fruit comes to our packhouse, gets sized and sorted on the same line as ours, and leaves under the same dispatch note.
- Seedlings and inputs supplied against harvest rather than cash
- Agreed grades and prices set before the season, not after
- Their fruit reaching buyers no single small farm could reach
“We are not doing them a favour. Without them we lose the order.”
Eighteen farms are in the network now. The commercial logic and the social one point the same way, which is the only reason it has lasted.
