Two fruit, five veg and a Blackberry

Fruit and vegetable wholesaling is widely seen as an old-fashioned, low-tech industry, but businesses in that sector are increasingly adopting the latest communications technology to help them operate efficiently.

Quality Produce International supplies a range of local and imported fruit and vegetables to more than 300 independent stores and the major supermarket chains in Western Australia, with a focus on bananas, mangoes, strawberries, citrus, stone fruits, gourmet vegetables and lettuce.

While keeping track of domestic sales and staff, Quality Produce director Damon Watling also juggles international and interstate travel between importing and exporting snow peas, baby corn and pretty much anything else that appears on 'that side' of the dinner plate.

"My main role here is the imports for all our products that we get in; whether it's snow peas from China or baby corn from Thailand. I'm responsible for getting them in and (staying) in contact with the suppliers as well," Mr Watling said.

"I'm generally at work by five or six in the morning on most days...and I do eastern states travel. It seems I'm over there every couple of months at the moment."

With a busy schedule of visiting growers, working with sales staff and travelling to meet with interstate and international players in the industry, Mr Watling spends much of his day outside the office, and found it difficult to access documents and keep in contact with clients.

The solution to these issues was a new Blackberry, which allowed Mr Watling to send and receive emails on the run, while taking calls and surfing the web, which has helped him keep in contact with suppliers and track produce in transit.

The Blackberry, which is the size of a mobile phone, can also be linked to its user's computer, allowing emails to be received and sent, and appointments to be updated remotely.

"It's a case where you wonder what you did without them before," Mr Watling told WA Business News.

"I went to Berlin for a conference, a big European one, and I came back through London and then stopped in Bangkok. I had about four hours to kill in Bangkok and I was getting messages that I had to quickly respond to about a problem with a shipment from Jakarta. An email came through and I managed to respond to it and deal with the issue before I got back on the plane to Perth, which I wouldn't have been able to do previously."

While the technology allows business to be done 24-7, what kind of impact does that have on life outside of work? Or does that term 'outside of work' even exist in the technology age? Mr Watling believes it's the individual's call.

"You can make yourself as available as you want to be," he said.

"The last thing I do before my head hits the pillow is turn my phone off and the first thing I do when I wake up is turn it on.

"Some people in the industry will happily leave their phone on all night, but I don't think I'd stay married if I did that."

Mr Watling's equipment was supplied as part of a deal negotiated by the Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable Industries in Western Australia with telecommunications company Vodafone.

The chamber was established in 1946 and acts as a representative and advisory body to 30 wholesalers operating from the busy central trading area of Market City in Canning Vale.

Mr Watling said he and most of the chamber's members had retained their landlines but noted that one member had scrapped his landline, making him totally reliant on mobile communications.

Its members currently operate with 110 Blackberrys and 10 Vodafone Mobile Connect data cards, which enable users to gain internet access on laptop computers across most parts of Australia.