Building the frozen fruit category from scratch

“In the beginning, I spent every day trying to get through to existing vegetable and ready-meal clients by phone. I kept hitting a wall because frozen fruit wasn’t a priority category for most retailers. But gradually, it became more important. The category has evolved beautifully in less than 15 years – and that’s thanks to real teamwork. Retail is a tender-driven business, but we’ve managed to move away from that, focusing on advice, partnership, and building the category instead. That wasn’t obvious years ago.

One period that really stuck with me was the COVID crisis. For foodservice, it was a disaster, but retail saw a real boom in frozen fruit. Volumes and sales tripled or even quadrupled, and we struggled to supply customers. That’s when true partnerships were forged – we needed our clients to help us forecast accurately, and they needed us to meet demand.”

Trends and market evolution

“Frozen fruit had a tough start. Years ago, you had to search for two or three references on the shelf. It wasn’t visible as a category. During COVID, we really put frozen fruit on the map. The average number of references increased to twelve or thirteen.

There’s the general trend towards healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle – protein products, functional foods like açai – and convenience, like yoghurt toppings for breakfast. Always available, no effort. These trends come up often with clients. The biggest segments – strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and forest mixes – will remain dominant. And newer options like mango and mixed fruits will grow as well. We also see niches emerging – tropical fruits that are hard to find fresh, like guava, coconut, pink dragon fruit, or jackfruit. Or açai berries, matcha, or blue spirulina combined with traditional fruits. And we see that social media also has a positive impact on the category. Think of the latest trend, frozen fruit covered in chocolate, for instance. But the key for retailers is to get the basics right, and then move into relevant niche products. "

"Social media has helped make frozen fruit sexier as a product group."

"The category is far from saturated and will keep growing as the offer becomes more professional. But for big growth, we need automation, new varieties, and new harvest zones. Demand is higher than supply, so expanding is essential. The biggest challenge? Raw material availability. Crops are harder to source, there’s competition for land, shortages of seasonal labour, and limited acreage to grow enough food. It’s an industry-wide issue, and solving that puzzle will be tough. Our product is essential – you can’t do without fruit; it’s a basic food. The challenge will be to match and guarantee the right raw materials from the right origin with the right customers.

In conclusion, there’s a lot happening in frozen. There are many players on the market, and our ambition at Crop’s is to be a leading one. I want to work actively with my colleagues to make that happen.”