On 22 October, French kiwifruit marketer Prim’land welcomed guests to its growing region in the Landes department of southwestern France, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Oscar kiwifruit brand.
The occasion began with a tour of the orchards and a presentation of the business and its prospects, before an evening reception was held for Oscar kiwifruit producers and their main customers.
Prim’land is the marketing arm of the Scaap Kiwifruits de France cooperative, a 250-member strong producer group that has been growing and selling kiwifruit under the Oscar brand for the past three decades.
“People were very happy with the event,” said Prim’land’s general manager Jean-Baptiste Pinel. “Oscar’s success is based on a high quality product.
In 30 years, we have been able to develop well, in terms of volumes, packaging and our ability to satisfy our customers.”
According to Mr Pinel, Oscar’s growers and Prim’land’s vision have been a key combination in reaching this milestone. “For 30 years we have been looking to the future, developing new varieties and paying close attention to the needs of our customers,” he says. “This is very important.”
The Oscar brand was created in 1980 by Guy Poylecot and François Lafitte, two kiwifruit growers from south-west France, who initially sent their entire crop to Germany, at the time the only European country that was familiar with the fruit.
The following year, the growers made history by launching Oscar as the first kiwifruit brand available in the French market, using it as a means of increasing awareness of the product within the country. In-store tastings were staged as an initial means of communicating with consumers.
Some 30 years later and the brand is not just present across Europe, but has also become established in major Asian markets, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, while Prim’land also ships the product to the US, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. More recently, Oscar-branded volumes became the first French kiwifruit to be exported to India and China.
As well as being produced in France, Oscar kiwifruit is grown by associated producers in Italy and under license in Chile, which enables the brand’s backers to have year-round volumes available.
Producers in Chile and Italy receive technical support from Scaap Kiwifruits de France to make sure that they use the same methods of kiwifruit cultivation as their French counterparts.
So far, the 2010/11 kiwifruit season in France is looking good, Mr Pinel tells Eurofruit Magazine at the end of October. “We are currently harvesting and the quality is excellent,” he says. “We have not yet had any climatic problems.”
Asked if the expected drop in Italian production would aid the cause of French kiwifruit, Mr Pinel reluctantly agrees. “Yes, it should help,” he says, “but we do not want to be considered as interchangeable with Italian kiwifruit.
“French kiwifruit is widely considered to be superior, both in taste and in shelf life, thanks to the soil and the humid climate in our region.”
Last year saw the company sending to the Chinese market for the very first time and with great success, according to Mr Pinel, and this year Prim’land intends to build on that success.
“The Oscar brand already has good recognition in China,” he says. “We are sending small volumes there at the moment, but we intend to increase sales.”
In addition to standard kiwifruit varieties, Oscar is available in yellow and red-fleshed variants, while baby kiwifruits – or ‘kiwaïs’ – have also been developed to meet consumer demand.
Prim’land says that its allied cooperative expects to produce around 13,000 tonnes of kiwifruit this year, which will be marketed under its Rouge, Organic, Summer kiwifruit and Kiwigold brands, as well as Oscar.
