Tom Amery, Managing Director at The Watercress Company, is confident that ensuring you have a reliable availability is fundamental to opening a new market and also educating the consumer to the benefits of the product. "Maintaining availability and quality throughout the year is also essential. Provenance is often discussed and although very important it’s a fact our strongest sales are during the months of 100% import into the UK."
Amery will be visiting The Netherlands in week 39, (23- 28 Sept) and meeting a series of businesses interested in pursuing fresh watercress sales. At the moment he expects this to be mainly driven by salad packers, but it’s very likely he will be meeting other areas of industry as the company are also suppliers of nutriceutical watercress powders, and also produce Wasabi which is already exported to The Netherlands.
"We are looking for businesses wanting to get involved in a unique growing product that has achieved proven performance within Europe. We would like to offer our time to discuss potential opportunities within The Netherlands.
Amery explains how The Watercress Company have contributed to the increased demand for watercress in the UK market, "I would say the fundamental selling point of watercress is the health attributes and flavour, fortunately watercress is brimming with nutritional benefits as well as some very well researched compounds that make it such a healthy product."
"Availability and quality were two very key parts to launching our watercress campaign. Awareness and marketing is only relevant once there is a supply structure in place. All UK supermarkets stock at least one format of watercress and have given their full support to promotion. The Watercress Alliance was formed in 2002 as a group of watercress farmers who jointly invest capital into marketing and research; this has aided a resurgence, understanding and interest in watercress leading to several successful marketing campaigns and continued growth year on year."
Watercress has also received good media coverage in the UK, Amery says that due to the unique way their products are grown, the historic farms and passionate growers, they have been lucky enough to attract a huge amount of coverage on television, radio and in print media.
"Our history, provenance and quality of crop has driven interest in our business. Providing topical stories regarding production, farming history and health benefits have kept the PR interest alive since we started. We have been part of an industry project and completed some very significant clinical research into the health benefits of watercress and this combined with the PR attention we have experienced significant increases in sales."
The Watercress Company now produce over 2.5m kg of watercress per year. The splits are heavily in favour of packed bagged of salads in solo and mixed lines. Six supermarket chains buy watercress from the company and the rest of the sales are through sandwich and ready-meal manufacturers, foodservice customers, and the finally some bespoke lines such as frozen products, dried powders or ice cream.
"We have expanded our supply and tailored our specifications to provide crops specific to our customer’s bespoke, and often exacting, standards. We now grow varieties for supermarket mono or mixed bags, small and soft eating for sandwiches, left long for bunching, specific grades for processing, organic and non-organic and a red watercress variety," explains Amery.
