How to make fruit and vegetable distribution a successful business
- 05
- 04
- 2022
In a competitive market and often dominated by companies with foreign capital, Microfruits, a Romanian group founded in 2013, managed to reach the top 5 players in the field in 2020. Together with Florin and Cristina Racovita, Adrian Racovita, a professional with experience in the fruit and vegetable market, built a business, which includes the companies Microfruits and Microfruits Logistics, which recorded year-on-year increases of two percentage points, and in 2019 the turnover jumped by the psychological threshold of 200 million lei. The increase in turnover was achieved in close connection with the development of the logistics component, as well as with the development of the team, which increased from 4 employees in 2013 to approximately 107 in 2020.
Solid logistics infrastructure
Microfruits has built a logistics infrastructure designed to meet the business needs of the company, which includes a logistics warehouse located in Branesti, Ilfov, with an area of approximately 4,200 square meters, as well as a modern car fleet. The warehouse consists of 14 cold rooms, a production room, a processing / packaging space, 7 dedicated iN / OUT ramps.
“The warehouse is class A, iFS certified, and the HACCP food safety management system is also implemented. The refrigeration units are monitored 24/7/365, and the mobility of the goods in the warehouse, as well as the service of the storage equipment is ensured by Jungheinrich Romania. The packaging / pallet storage spaces respect the integrated circular system that allows Microfruits to ensure the delivery of the goods in the shortest time in conditions of maintaining the temperature controlled chain. In 2021 the warehouse was expanded by 1,800 sqm, the space of the support departments was brought to EU standards and properly equipped for carrying out the activity in optimal conditions and expanded by 400 sqm " says Ionut Niculescu, Microfruits Operations Manager.
The warehouse employs 80 employees, in three shifts, some of them from Nepal, given the situation of the labor force on the local market, both in terms of the number of employees available, but also the quality of their training. This year, 16 new members will be brought to the team, possibly also from Nepal, to complete the storage team of the fruit and vegetable importer. As for the transport fleet operating in Microfruits Logistics, it includes 19 heavy trucks and 3 light commercial vehicles, all equipped with thermogrammed refrigeration units.
"The fleet will be expanded with another 8 Euro 6 trucks, an investment of over 1 million euros that we wanted to make earlier, but due to the microchip crisis we received delivery deadlines over 6 months late," he explains. Ionut Niculescu.
