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StePac, modified atmosphere and humidity packaging specialist, held a four-day seminar at its headquarters in Tefen, Israel last week to review its products and service internationally. Customers from abroad as well as several of StePac's strategic partners were also invited.

The company has been supplying its packaging products to the fresh produce industry for 11 years and every year the company undergoes the same thorough process of self-analysis. "Every year, at the end of our financial year, we bring everyone together from our offices around the world for a budget meeting to review and evaluate customer satisfaction surveys and the past year's performance and plan the next 12 months" says StePac president Israel Ben-Tzur. "A number of our global team now attend Fruit Logistica, so it makes sense to continue."

While StePac is performing well in financial terms, having registered an increase of more than 100 percent in turnover in the last two years, Ben-Tzur says there is always room for improvement, and the clients are a good yardstick.

"We do well in Central and South America, we are strong in Turkey and we have moved on a lot in penetrating the US market. We recently agreed to open a new joint venture office in southern Russia and we have a few interesting activities happening there already. In the last 12 months, we have consolidated our melon programs and increased our presence in the banana and cherry categories. We have also expanded our vegetable program, which is now significant in size. We want to build on that, of course. Where we are strong, we intend to get better, and where we are mediocre, we want to improve considerably."

Director of the firm's R&D effort, Dr Gary Ward and the head of the Tefen laboratory Dr Yola Saks both had their opportunity to assess the direction of their work. With a series of innovative products to come off the production line in the next few months, the team's understanding of the market into which they will emerge is vital.

"Our philosophy is to maximize the performance of our technology through the development of strategic partnerships and support technologies; this is an area where we have made a lot of progress," says Ben-Tzur.

Vertical integration is the name of the game and the seminar gave credence to Ben-Tzur's stated policy. Presentations given by the Volcani Institute, the leading Israeli agricultural research centre, Hishtil Nurseries, a growing plant propagation venture with five nurseries in Israel, Zeraim Gedera, the well-reputed and like-minded Israeli seed breeder, and Organitech, a revolutionary hydroponics system, illustrated the attention to detail being placed at these links in the supply chain.

Dr Nehemia Aharoni, of the post-harvest department of the Volcani Institute delivered a presentation that illustrated the clear shelf-life and performance benefits of using Xtend technology with various products, with statistics and data taken from research work carried out by his team. He hailed the ‘unique' performance of the packaging in tests against many other packaging media.

Gad Elsar of Hishtil Nurseries said that his firm plays a "small but very important part" in the growing process, and detailed the rapid progress it is making in international markets, often in conjunction with StePac. Both Zeraim Gedera, following its vertically integrated marketing principles, and Organitech, which already has projects up and running in Russia and with Martinavarro, in Murcia, are also working with StePac to promote an integrated view of the supply chain, both domestically and abroad.