Food News

Did you know that AGROLAB RADAR was actually the brainchild of a customer of our Polish laboratory AGROLAB Polska (then Eurocontrol)?

A major Polish retail chain asked the account manager in Kiel at the time to provide them with a monthly summary of notable pesticide findings from samples taken from the ‘fruit and vegetables’ section of our laboratory – anonymously, of course. That must have been in 2007. The quality manager wanted to set up an early warning system to adapt his test plan to possible, unforeseeable risks. One day, our account manager (who has since retired) complained to me – I was still site manager in Kiel at the time – that this evaluation was increasingly taking up valuable working time.
We had our IT department program an automated, anonymised query from the database so that we could generate the list at the beginning of the month ‘at the touch of a button’ and send it to Poland by fax.

That was the birth of AGROLAB RADAR.

It was obvious that this information not only represented potential added value for this one customer, but that such data could also be of interest to other customers. Anonymised data from AGROLAB laboratories is never representative, but supplementing this information with publicly available data could provide a small information advantage. We therefore supplemented our own data with relevant reports from the European Rapid Alert System and other sources of information available to us through our networks. We also added news about new methodological developments, legal changes in the area of food safety and, last but not least, some industry news.

From fax letter to international newsletter

Over the last ten years, what started as a fax letter has developed into a regular, free information service for our customers in the food industry and anyone else who is interested. This service is aimed at anyone who doesn't have the time or motivation to compile, evaluate and summarise the daily flood of news from many different sources themselves.

I have been happily performing this task since 2015. Our in-house employees, whether in sales, quality management or customer service, also appreciate AGROLAB RADAR and are loyal subscribers.

The newsletter was launched during a phase of increasing internationalisation of the laboratory group. That is why we designed RADAR to be multilingual from the outset. German and English are our standard languages. However, customers in Italy, Spain, Poland and France also receive the most important news in their respective national languages. Local managers decide which articles appear in which additional languages. They also ensure that stylistic blunders are eliminated as far as possible through semi-automated translations. In addition to the translations, additional regional articles are also published in the respective countries.

I am proud to say that our AGROLAB RADAR stands out from other company newsletters not only because of this, but also because of its careful research, linked sources and a tolerable amount of self-promotion (‘YOUR PLUS.’). This is reflected in steadily growing subscriber numbers (see chart) and encouragingly high ‘click rates’ for individual articles.

YOUR PLUS: AGROLAB RADAR is now entering its 11th year of publication, and you can continue to look forward to informative and exciting articles. Eleven issues are planned per year. We always welcome your feedback and suggestions. Stay tuned!

Author: Dr. Frank Mörsberger, AGROLAB GROUP