Peter Hall

Peter Hall grows and packs top fruit in Kent. In 2005 he started to compare costs and share best practice with other growers in a benchmarking group called Checkers 83.

- Benchmarking and productivity
- Benchmarking to suit your business
- Benchmarking

For many years, the general trend for UK top fruit production has been a steady decline. Many top fruit farms have been unable to maintain profitability and have exited the industry. Despite this overall picture, many growers are achieving profitability and obtaining superior results setting them apart. One reason for this is to be found in their business practices.
 

	We have no control over the world price of our produce, but we can control our costs and improve our yields. Benchmarking helps us focus on those glaring differences in performance and ask why they are occurring Peter Hall Top Fruit Production

Benchmarking and productivity

A recent study by the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers concluded:

“By initiating benchmarking of productivity measures such as tonnes per hectare or turnover per hectare as well as harvesting and packing costs, growers would be able to reassess continually their own performance against industry standards. Using these comparisons, growers could establish improved performance targets, learning from the practices and standards of the best growers.”

Peter Hall, like other growers, has made many changes on his farm.

• Over time he has used less fertiliser and learnt to apply it more effectively
• Advice is sought, often from different angles to help resolve tricky issues
• A desk-top computer has helped streamline many office practices

Despite these and other improvements, Peter acknowledges that he is not good at everything. Furthermore, without a tool like benchmarking, Peter is unaware of how well he is doing compared to the rest of the industry.

Whatever size of business and whatever varieties are grown, all growers have to undertake similar operations, for example pruning, applying fertilisers and pesticides. In Checkers 83 the growers taking part in benchmarking are finding a way to compare their costs with other growers in order to identify potential problem areas that they can act on.
 

Benchmarking to suit your business

Peter’s orchards are located in the Low Weald part of Kent, an area that is prone to late frosts. Because of the production risks, Peter diversified some time ago and established a central packing facility that has now been expanded for handling year-round supply.

In the early days, Peter was supplying through Orchard World and was first introduced to benchmarking by Laurence Olins.

Laurence is a long-standing advocate of benchmarking and set up an arrangement under which each of the pack-houses, supplying through Orchard World, would visit each other to identify and share best-practice. This was a very informal arrangement but worked well.

Peter’s business has now moved on but he has been looking to repeat the benefits that benchmarking has brought to his pack-house with an approach that he could apply on his farm.

For Peter, any benchmarking had to fit in with the principles that underpin his approach to running the business:

• Keep it simple
• Be focused on specific objectives
• Monitor and appraise your own performance

Benchmarking

	Although the benchmarking template will enable us to understand our costs better, it is not a penny-chasing exercise.   The true worth is in flagging up variations in costs per tonne or per hectare so that we can identify why these are occurring and move forward Peter Hall Top Fruit Production

When Peter became aware of benchmarking, he realised that it provided the structured approach that he was looking for and he set about interesting other growers in the Checkers 83 group. Seven nearby growers agreed to form a group. A template was been designed with the help of Peter and his colleagues that enables the growers to capture their costs and identify their true net margin. All of the technical work has been carried out by Andersons – the Farm Business Consultants.

Benchmarking is based on the idea that small groups of growers compare their costs of production in a totally confidential way. These comparisons typically reveal wide variations that form the focus of discussion in the group.

Each group will generate an improvement plan for its members that will help them reduce costs or develop aspects of quality and service. This can be a powerful tool for individual growers, particularly as there are several different groups from across the top fruit sector taking part.

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