Are Your Juices and Your
Company Ready for the Next Century?
|
by James E. Tillotson, Ph.D.
About the author
Dr. James Tillotson has earned a
Ph.D. from M.I.T. (Food Science and Technology), an M.A. in
Biology from Boston University, and an M.B.A. from the University
of Delaware. He received his undergraduate degree at Harvard
University in behavioral sciences. He is the author of numerous
scholarly papers. He is well known in the cranberry industry,
having worked at Ocean Spray as vice president
for technical research and development from 1969 to 1989. For the
past twelve years he has pursued his academic interest in business
strategy and international business. He is Professor of Food
Policy and International Business at Tufts University and adjunct
professor at both Michigan State University (Food Science and
Human Nutrition) and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
(International Business).
Professor Tillotson is a highly
respected scholar who writes about the global juice business, not
just cranberries. His articles are thought provoking and must
reading for those interested in what will happen to the food and
agribusiness sector into the next two or three decades. He raises
questions that must be understood, addressed, and responded to in
the marketplace by any company that wants to remain competitive in
the future.
This article is
republished on Cranberry Stressline with the kind permission of
FLUESSIGES OBST GmbH, published in FRUIT PROCESSING 7/2000.
About Fruit Processing
Magazine
FRUIT PROCESSING is
the international fruit juice magazine in English language.
Circulation is worldwide with a special focus on innovative
technologies for purees, paste, fruit preparations, juice
concentrates and baby food . The 12 annual issues are published
for companies of the fruit juice industry and their suppliers, as
well as for companies and institutions concerned with the
production and marketing of fruit juice and fruit preparations.
Their worldwide readership is estimated at 4,500 key persons in
technical and commercial management, beverage and food technology,
product development and science. The magazine is distributed to
companies (85 %) and to individual recipients (15 %).
Topics regularly
covered in FRUIT PROCESSING are raw material and additives,
equipment and technology, analytics, original papers from
universities and colleges on the state-of-the-art of science and
research, legal aspects, marketing, market data, price range for
semi-finished products, reports on exhibitions and trade shows,
trend reports, technical literature, business news, and to
professional training and education. The subjects include problems
which partly relate to the complete international readership and
partly represent topics of interest to a continent or a group of
countries.
Main topics:
Raw material:
Cultivation, harvest technologies
Processing: Extraction and filtration systems,
enzyme application
Filling: Bottle inspection,
filling, pasteurization, rinsing,
palletizing, packaging material
Quality Control: Analytical methods, laboratory equipment
For further
information please visit their web site: www.fruit-processing.com
FLÜSSIGES OBST GmbH
Diezer Strasse 5
D-56370 Schönborn
Tel.: +49 64 86 / 91 34-0
Fax +49 64 86 / 62 20
e-mail: [email protected]
|
Changing World, Changing
Consumers, Changing Tastes.
40th International Fruit Juice
Week
Cologne, Germany
April 13, 2000
Ed. note: The
slides referenced in this article will be added shortly. Please check
back in a day or two.
Good afternoon.
Are Your Juices and Your Company
Ready for the Next Century?
|
Are your juices and your company ready
for the next century?
What issue could be more important to our
professional lives!
To try to answer this question for you
this afternoon, I have had the help of some hundred or so very smart men
and women in our industry over the last 17 months.
You say, "How is that?"
My presentation this afternoon has a
history.
Its development goes back to October of
1998, when I was asked to be on the program celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the International Federation of Fruit Juice Producers
in Paris in March of 1999.
My given topic was, Juices
in the 21st Century: A Futuristic Vision of the Global Fruit
& Vegetable Juice Industry
Being very honored, as I am be here to
talk with you today, I wanted to prepare a talk that was more than one
simply out of my head and my files.
Or, depended on what I had learned during
the twenty years I worked in American juice industry, prior to becoming
an academic.
Therefore, I turned the future talks both
in Paris and here in Cologne into an ongoing research project over the
last 17 months
Over this period I gather information
from three sources as the basis of this talk today:
- Mainly, and most importantly, I gather
information in one-on-one interviews with experts in the juice
industry, in Europe and North America. For European interviews I
used mainly telephone interviews.
- These were, of course, the some
hundred knowledgeable men and women I have already mentioned with
whom I have the opportunity to discuss the future of our industry.
- I also reviewed futuristic articles
concerning the global food industries, concentrating on the
commercial beverages industries. Frankly, These were of minimal use.
- Finally, as academic now, much of my
present work is concerned with trend and strategic analysis, trying
to predict the future of the global beverage and food industries.
This work contributed also to some of my comments this afternoon.
The initial information gathered during
the first six months of the project formed the basis of my talk last
April in Paris.
While in Paris last April, Evi Brennich
asked me to consider continuing this project, using the same approach.
Particularly continuing my interviews
with industry sources, and then share the results of my continuing work
with you today.
So here I am this afternoon.
My talk to you this afternoon is my best
attempt to synthesis the information I have collected during the last 17
months into a form that will be useful for you in conducting your
business.
The important point is this presentation
is very much a synthesis of the thinking of many of the very bright and
able we have in our industry today; certainly not mine alone!
Naturally, such a comprehensive ongoing
survey yielded far too many and diverse trends, some 100 in all, that I
could report this afternoon. Therefore I have selected those topics that
seem to be presently the most compelling to the future of our industry.
Other material, based this ongoing
survey, I am already publishing.
For example this survey identified to me
the growing importance of global supermarkets, and I have an article on
this subject appearing this month.
With this background, I ask you again:
"Are your juices and your company ready for the next century?"
In my interviews the future was a major
topic.
Without my bringing up the subject, the
issue of being prepared for the future was a subject mentioned by almost
everyone interviewed.
The Juice Business is changing;
and changing fast
|
It will come as no surprise to you that
the general impression I received from my interviews was that our
industry has changed and was continuing to change, particularly during
the last decade of the twentieth century.
Those interviewed expected more change as
we enter the twenty-first century.
However, those interviewed addressed the
subject of "change" in a number ways.
Changing World, Changing
Consumers, Changing Tastes
|
The quickest way I can demonstrate this
sense of change as well as the diversity of the scope of changes
mentioned is to repeat a few short, but very insightful quotes from
these interviews.
See if you have said or thought the same
thoughts about the changes we are going through in our industry.
"Yesterday, I was in the
apple business; today, I am in the juice business; tomorrow, I will be
in the beverage business!"
"Juices have gone from a
product I sold, to an ingredient in a beverage I market."
"The juice business today is
more about computers and distribution than juices and production!
This same manager when on to say:
"Yesterday, I ran my business,
but today, a computer runs the business. Yes, a computer located at the
headquarters of a global supermarket chain."
|
Page 2 >>>
Home |