Farmers start to deliver straight to customers’ homes to avoid slotting fees
Livestock farmers in Romania have started to deliver boxes of fresh meat straight to the homes of their customers, in an attempt to dodge slotting fees required by retailers and the intermediaries that pressure for lower prices.
“We started direct deliveries because we were unable to sell in many stores and we wanted to dodge the slotting allowance and reach the end customer directly. Getting our own stores is rather difficult. We sell 5% to 10% of our production via direct deliveries and 90% via big retailers,” said Dan Spataru, manager of Meat Box group, which raises 18,000 pigs a year in its own farms in Brasov and Braila counties. A price of a pork box from Meat Box starts at 60 lei (EUR13) for four kilos of meat and may go to as much as RON180 for 12 kilos. The company distributes the meat using its own cars in Bucharest and Ilfov and Brasov Counties.
Beef cattle farmer Karpaten Meat in Sibiu, too, started home deliveries in 2017, after opening the Karpaten Premium Angus online store. Angus beef goes to customers in reusable refrigerated boxes, via parcel delivery companies. A five-kilo Angus beef box costs RON250 to RON500.
Meat producers in Romania usually sell to slaughterhouses, processors, retailers and intermediaries that export the meat.
Meat producers are therefore following in the footsteps of vegetable and fruit farmers, which were the first to begin door-to-door delivery. Delivery to a customers’ home is less expensive than establishing one’s own brick and mortar store and farmers get to keep more of the profit, says Alina Constantinescu, founder of Nasul Rosu farm in Palanca, Prahova County, which deliveries fruit and vegetables to customers’ homes. The direct relationship with the beneficiaries is not without difficulties, she added. “Direct delivery entails higher marketing costs, more employees involved in sales and the relation with the customers.” (EUR1=RON4.6596)
March 2018, www.zfenglish.com