Growers associations
Successfully positioning your product in the market
Joining forces to sell cultivars can be of great added value to growers. Developing new cultivars and launching them in the market is a major investment and profits must be generated fast. This is why many growers opt for collaboration instead of competing against each other. CNB believes in this approach and offers support to growers associations and breeding companies to collectively sell and run promotional product campaigns.
With 38 Growers associations representing over 200 varieties, we have the experience, knowledge and creativity to successfully position any variety on the market. Combined with our sales force and our consultants’ wide network we have become the preferred partner for breeding companies, growers and buyers. In addition to drafting and executing production and sales policies, our services also involve to help set up, organize and take care of the administration of growers associations. For breeding companies, we can take care of the issuing and administration of licenses and the collection of royalties.
Growers associations & competition law – the CNB solution
CNB ensures that its services always comply with the prevailing legal guidelines. It recently emerged that price and production agreements made by growers in growers associations sometimes result in competition law related risks. Despite this, we do see a clear demand for price and production agreements. This demand instigated us to develop an alternative methodology for growers that is competition law proof while still allowing a collective pricing policy. With the help of specialized legal experts and in consultation with the ACM (Dutch Authority for Consumer and Markets), the new methodology will be introduced during 2018’s harvest.
The key element of the solution is to establish a separate limited company which takes over the primary sales activities of growers associations. This is only done at the request of the growers association. The growers association keeps control over all other activities, such as promotion, research and quality assurance. The idea of a limited company expands CNB’s services and demonstrates its commitment to growers by enhancing their success, achievement and sales revenue, now and in future.
Would you like to know more about the new methodology and the limited company? Please feel free to contact us, we would be happy to explain the details.