Crates for retail

CPR System had a 2015 marked by a trail of successes, logging increased turnover and revenue and a promising reorganization of the company that has brought the double advantage of consolidating its core business and opening it up to new markets. R.C.

CPR System is a cooperative enterprise based in Gallo (Ferrara), which has been operating since 1998 in the pooling sector, creating reusable collapsible plastic crates for fresh fruit and vegetables, but also meats, which can be used without producing environmental waste or emissions. This integration of services into its business guarantees members with major, quantifiable savings both by reducing the impact of organic waste and by making distribution logistics more efficient. Thanks to the adoption of a model that is the only of its kind in Europe, CPR is able to offer an ongoing partnership between production and distribution. Indeed, while on one hand the cooperative is made up of over one thousand producers, primarily of fresh fruit and vegetables, they are also joined by over fifty retailers, with names of the caliber of Coop, Conad, Sigma, Pam, Bennet, etc. And this close relationship of the two “souls” of the supply chain facilitates market and consumption monitoring, enabling the coop to develop products and services that appropriately respond to the changes in retail distribution as the need arises.

A model based on working together
As CPR’s president Maura Latini explained during the course of the enterprise’s annual assembly in June: «The factors determining CPR’s success are three: firstly, high capitalization enables us to invest appropriately and robustly as the need arises. Secondly, a streamlined cost structure enables us to guarantee real savings by, where possible, adopting strategies characterized by maximum efficiency and minimal waste. And finally, our cooperative model has proven effective not only as a business model per se, but also because it represents an example of a socially responsible partnership between producers and distributors».
The wisdom of the CPR model is supported by its turnover, which grew in 2015 to reach 50 million euro. The results the concern has achieved and the need to guarantee appropriate responses led to its decision, in 2015, to reorganize the structure of the group.
CPR Servizi, the CPR System partner dedicated to services for members, has become FCLog, of which 70% is owned by CPR System and 30% is owned by CFT. FCLog inherits the function of CPR Servizi but also expands it to include other important competencies in the management of the storage network and in commercial development. Through FCLog, CPR is implementing rental services both in consolidated sectors like that of fresh fruit and vegetables (in which it handles 2.3 million crates per year) and in new sectors like water, taking advantage of its flexible structure.

Projects for fresh fruit and vegetables
The health of the cooperative is evidenced by the dynamism of its activities, among which figures the development of new projects anticipating trends that will affect and require a response from retail. For example, CPR has recently presented two solutions for the transport, distribution and display of fruit and vegetables in stores. In the first case, the concern developed a new layout for packaging grapes and cherries featuring a paperboard insert on the bottom of the green crates that improves the aesthetic appeal of the packaged product in the green CPR crates. This seemingly simple solution, which is now in testing, could potentially expand the range of products that CPR packages thanks to an excellent valorization of the product in the green crates. Another project involves the creation of new display formats for fruit and vegetables to function as a service to members, with the involvement of some major Italian retail chains.