The contract, which includes importing and exporting of products, was awarded to NFT in large part because of the geographical advantages offered by NFT’s new port-centric London facility located at the Port of Tilbury, based at Thurrock in Essex.
Essential Fruit is a fruit importer, providing raw materials for pre-packed fruit salads, juice-based drinks and many other value-added food products that contain real fruit.
Year-round supply
It deals mainly with citrus fruits and sources worldwide from more than 50 different producers in both the northern and southern hemispheres, which enables it to provide a constant year-round supply of produce.
NFT’s Tilbury facility is claimed to be the largest quayside chilled food distribution hub in Europe.
It is said to offer ‘end-to-end’ logistics, raising supply chain efficiency and providing opportunities to cut distribution costs, food waste and food miles by up to 20%.
The contract with Essential Fruit is a six-month rolling deal, because of the seasonal nature of the business.
UK and European markets
As part of the initial contract, NFT is developing a service for the company, which will involve the collection of containers, storage handling and distribution both to the UK and European markets of up to 6,000 pallets a week.
“Essential Fruit imports and exports fruit products from all around the world and the port-centric chilled capability of NFT London, coupled with the network infrastructure of the wider NFT business has provided a superior strategic location for our operations into and out of the UK,’’ said Dan Cahill, md of Essential Fruit.
Dale Fiddy, strategic development director at NFT, said: “Essential Fruit uses most of the ports in the south east of England and is a great example of NFT London providing commercial advantage, regardless of the port of entry into the UK.”