When U.K. company Blue Skies first started operating in the late 90s, fresh-cut tropical fruits on British supermarket shelves were unheard of. Fast forward two decades and business has blossomed.

The secret to the success? Founder Anthony Pile believes it is not just about high quality products, but having a culture of interdependence and a business model that generates mutual respect with staff.

Pile began sourcing produce out of Ghana in 1998, enticed by the climate that allowed for year-round production of many tropical fruits, and later started working with other countries in Africa and South America.

Melon farmers in Egypt

The company's range now includes non-tropical fruits and, more recently, a range of juices sold in the local markets.

"At the beginning it was a story of producing a lot of things which people had not had before," he told www.freshfruitportal.com.

"We started with [U.K. supermarket chain] Sainsbury's, and it gradually grew from there. They later wanted to have deciduous fruits like grapes, apples, oranges, and so we opened up factories in Egypt and South Africa so we could offer year-round seasonal fruits.

"Every single item we do we were the first to do, and we carried on building the business. Later we started a factory in Brazil, which backed up the requirement for mango on a year-round basis."

Following Iceland's volcanic eruptions in 2010 which caused widespread air travel disruption in Europe for several days, Blue Skies also established a factory in the U.K. itself to avoid future delays.

"We started with around 35 people - we’ve now got just under 5,000 people working for us all over," he said.

Despite the large number of staff, Blue Skies has managed to successfully operate with a strongly ingrained focus on social responsibility.

"We pay people two and a half times the minimum wage, look after local communities, and actually do all things people often shout about. That made a huge difference to the loyalty of our staff and our capacity to produce high quality products," Pile said.

He explained his perspective was largely shaped from serving in the British Army and being sent to different conflicts around the world.

"In all these places you do learn about people and you learn about interdependence which transcends all the notions of class and status," he said.

A playground project in South Africa

"One thing which I think is so important in life is that actually you put people’s minds to rest about the differences between one another, and that was particularly important going to Africa. We didn’t want anybody treating it as a neo-colonial activity or exploitation.

"What we therefore did is say ‘we’re here forever, here is our model - it's called a Joint Effort Enterprise'. Yes, it is about making a profit, but more importantly it's about a culture in which we are interdependent, where we do have mutual respect and trust in each other."

Indicative of this attitude is that Pile and his colleagues don't talk about the 'workers', but 'people', as he says the former is immediately a derogatory term whereby 'one is up and one is down'.

"This is particularly important when it comes to unions - generally speaking we're not unionized," he said.

"We don't need to have some sort of formal protection, it’s protection that’s inbuilt within the culture for each other. If somebody can’t afford to pay a hospital bill or is being bullied, then the system has failed."

"That sort of attitude tends to lead to very strong cohesive-like family."

Along with socially responsible business practices, Blue Skies has also established a charitable foundation in each of the countries where it sources fruit, providing funds for sustainable projects which benefit the community.

Pile said these had come largely in response to requests to support local projects, which he felt needed some level of coordination to be successful.

"Communities that provide farming support for us are asked to produce a representative, those representatives form a committee, and that committee looks at all the applications that are coming through, and like in any democratic arena they will battle for the right to have their project through," he said.

"Part of argument is to have it totally sustainable - if you spend money on it then it needs to be earning money for itself somehow.

The original juice team in Ghana

"For example, we built a municipal toilet block in Ghana for which they will fork out a fraction of a penny, but that pays for a janitor, the repairs, and so on. So it's got to be sustainable, we're not just dishing out cash."

This 'thriving' series of projects plays a key role in the communities' sanitation, health and education, and are adapted to the needs of the people living in each area.

Pile says these company practices have 'absolutely' been instrumental to the company's success over the years, both due to the strong loyalty of the people who work for the company and retailer interest in responsibly sourced high quality products.

Blue Skies is now looking to diversify its business away from the U.K., in large part because of the country's referendum decision in June to leave the European Union, which has sent the value of the pound plummeting.

"Clearly the U.K. market is less attractive to us now. I have a feeling that we will be bumping along the bottom of the pound for sometime," he said.

"A clever thing to do is to spread out interests a bit more east and west around the world into regional and local markets, which is certainly part of my strategy."

"We have a small range of juice products which sell in South African and West Africa. We're also about to start in Egypt, and probably in Brazil. So there already embryonic development of the market in those areas."

Pile says new markets are always slow to build, but few would doubt the potential of a company that has for so long focused on socially responsible practices which are now becoming a hot topic for consumers and retailers the world over.

Photos: Courtesy of Blue Skies

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