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
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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 50^th anniversary of the International Federation of Fruit Juice Producers in Paris in March of 1999.

My given topic was, Juices in the 21^st 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."

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