“Pack To Order” Of Fruits Offers More Value To The Modern Retailer

The unique selling proposition of ‘Pack to order’ is supplying produceas per customized format from the source itself.

- Sreekumar C Sreedhar

Pack-to-Order” concept means packing and supplying produce, majorly fruits, customized to the requirement of the retailer, from the farm source itself. It is best suited for fruits such as Grapes, Oranges, Pomegranates, Kinnow, Apple, Thai Guavas, etc. It is a complete farm-to-retail model without any major investment in the back-end infrastructure and entails no manpower for the retailer. In this model, only the customer order quantity is harvested, which helps to reduce wastage and carry forward the stock at multiple levels of the Fruits & Vegetables (F&V) value chain. Also, the store gets real farm fresh stock.

Pack-to-Order has become more relevant today to the modern retailer for the many advantages it brings, including savings in costs, time, labour, and resources in bringing the produce from the farms to the market. It reduces wastage, improves product quality and shelf life, thereby resulting in repeated buying from the customer.

In the model, temporary packaging centres are created in the middle of the major growing belts. Immediately after the harvest, the fruits are packed into punnets, which are again repacked in carton trays, and customized to a retailer’s order with relevant stickers and barcodes if required. The packs are then transported in a reefer van directly to the retailer across major cities in India. Earlier, Pack-toOrder was applied only for exports.

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