Coastline Berries

News for 2013

Coastline has served up more than £7,000 to charities after taking clients out to tee.

Coastline Food Service Ltd, the Christchurch-based company, hosted its annual fundraising golf day in October, and among those helping the day go with a swing was football pundit and former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson OBE.

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Celebrity chef hands awards to Christchurch eateries

Christchurch's top eateries are savouring mouth-watering victories after success in the 2011 Best of the Best awards – a prestigious food competition sponsored by Coastline Produce.

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The Coastline Market Stall goes back to it's routes at the Hotel & Catering show

Coastline's stand at the Hotel & Catering show got off to an excellent start with a swarm of hungry students hitting the stand after they had been competing in some of the cooking competitions, of which Coastline is a main sponsor

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Rungis -
The French Connection

Situated conveniently on the outskirts of Paris near the auto-route, train station and Orly airport, the Rungis market is sight to behold. Indeed, it's the biggest market in the world covering 573 acres with 13,000 people working for over a thousand companies serving 20,000 commercial buyers daily.

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chilled goods - fresh fruit & vegetables - exotic fruit & vegetables - dry goods - frozen goods - non-food goods
Environmental Responsibilities

Environmental responsibility

Food security is one of these issues and farmers across the world, let alone the UK, are under economic pressure to maximise the yields of the land they farm. Increasingly, fields are being turned over to growing crops for fuel and this will affect food production and eventually, availability. Equally, the UK’s ability to provide produce for an ever expectant population is another challenge.

Coastline has always felt a responsibility to work with organisations like Hampshire Fare, the not-for-profit company instigated by Hampshire County Council in a bid to capture and harvest the high quality produce being grown in the County. With Depots in other key locations, and with other regions being targeted in the future, this is a serious and high priority policy that needs micro-managing. “We want to buy locally wherever we can, but the cost of collecting relatively small quantities of undeniably good produce is rendered uneconomic if we have to expend a disproportionate level of resources doing so”, explained Chris Lewis at a recent trade event. “We believe that Councils, food groups and economic regions need to provide a type of “hub” where the growers and producers can bring their product for grading and weighing before obtaining a fair and economic price from buyers such as Coastline”, he went on.

And Chris should know; he has to source produce from all over the world to meet the demands of his 1000 customers and before doing so, observe strict compliance, quality and packaging issues before picking and re-packaging thousands of ingredients overnight for delivery the next morning. “The supply chain has to be robust and reliable if the diversity of ingredients demanded by customers, and subsequently by Coastline’s customers, is going to be met”, Chris concludes. There in lies the problem with sourcing from a multitude of smaller growers and producers, the logistics involved has to be efficient to avoid an environmental cost that wipes out the gain.