The bananas arrive in a Sainsbury store from a Sainsbury depot, where they have been delivered the night before in a temperature‐controlled truck, in the Mack Group’s livery (most likely contracted out to a specialist produce transport firm). The bananas are triggered in the ripening rooms of Mack at Paddock Wood, in Kent, for five to six days until the exact order specification has been established. The retailer has a very exact specification of the stage of ripeness of the banana and will send back a consignment if the fruit colour and maturity stage is not correct.
A (sub‐contracted) temperature‐controlled truck transports the banana consignment to Mack overnight, after Noboa’s banana boat has docked at Zeebrugge, Belgium. The bananas are inspected, by Mack personnel, at the dockside, at which point the purchase is concluded and title to the goods is transferred. The journey from Ecuador takes 13 days, with the bananas packed in pallets, or in containers, depending on customer requirements. The bananas are held at the Ecuadorian dockside for a maximum of six hours before the ship departs, having been delivered to the quayside by a Noboa plantation‐owned temperature controlled truck ‐ a drive of around five hours.
The time taken for the bananas to travel from the fields to being loaded on to the first lorry, through the packhouse, is approximately three hours. Each packhouse has around 50 staff drawing in bananas produced within a hinterland of 200 hectares. The underpinning philosophy is that these small areas are fully productive, compact and controllable. Just‐in‐time can be used with very little slack as the packhouses can cut the requirements of a daily programme to a volume they can handle. It is possible to identify the specific person who packed each hand of bananas, as each box is identified with the code of packhouse, and a colour code for each packer in each packhouse. This comprehensive degree of traceability fully satisfies the requirements of the due diligence considerations of the 1990 Food Safety Act.
The first bananas from a new crop can be harvested within a year of planting, although this varies according to soil and climate.
Generally, a banana stem can be produced within seven to nine months. Bananas need a regular supply of water and oxygenated soil, preferably on a flat plain. When growing, the bananas are enclosed in a plastic wrap to stop leaf scarring (thrips) and insect damage. When the banana stem is harvested, the used plastic wraps are made into a rope to act as protection and stop jarring in transit to the packhouse. The bananas are cut at three‐quarters maturity; if any more mature, their ripening cannot be controlled in transit. Two men cut in a team with 60‐100lb of bananas released per stem.
They are hoisted on to a cableway and protected from the sun until the packhouse is reached, then they are towed in on a tractor. Each banana hand is checked by quality control staff for general maturity and colour code, then the flower on the end of each banana is removed by hand. The bananas are floated through a fungicide bath, which seals and protects the bananas and drowns any insects, before being packed into boxes, ready for the journey to the store (see Table I).
Theory and practice ‐ what lessons are there to be learned?
The future vision of J Sainsbury is to streamline the supply chain and ensure that information can flow between the three players, both upwards and downwards, to maximize the responsiveness of the chain to consumer wants. J Sainsbury and its fresh produce partners recognize that, increasingly, the competition basis will be the performance of one supply chain against another, rather than simply, retailer versus retailer, and distributor versus distributor.
How was the supply chain described above developed? J Sainsbury has a predilection for forging supply alliances with privately‐owned, often family‐owned companies; both Mack and Noboa are in this category. Through Mack, Noboa was identified as the banana supplier which best met the criteria established by J. Sainsbury (e.g. on quality, supply consistency, etc.). The Ecuadorian bananas were tested in Europe and negotiations were opened with the Noboa plantation group. Mack’s technical director visited Noboa in Ecuador and the process from farm to dockside was audit tested. Initially, one farm was selected, and a dedicated supply chain was developed.
The plantation and packhouse managers are regularly informed about UK banana market developments, providing a focus at source and a clear understanding of the retail business here in the UK. The Sainsbury buyer and technical services staff visit the plantations periodically. This is often in conjunction with their direct counterparts from Mack and Noboa. The communication links are quite complex (see Table II), with perhaps seven or eight crucial management information flows between Mack and any one of its customers; these include dialogue between respective technical, commercial, transport and quality assurance staff. This is both on an individual and on a departmental level. For Mack, the relationship it has established with the plantation in Ecuador is the most advanced, but in other countries, like Martinique, Mack is working towards developing further dedicated supply chains. In the complex world of EU