Corbel Croxson Haynes apples

Eurofruit organised a special round table meeting last week in London for the French apple sector, bringing together some of the UK’s leading topfruit industry players and introducing them to representatives of France’s apple export business.

At the meeting, which was hosted on behalf of French food and wine marketing agency Sopexa at Earl's Court, were two of the UK's top fresh produce retail buyers – David Croxson, senior buying manager at Tesco, and Paul Morgan, trading manager at Musgrave, which owns the Budgens and Londis banners.

Alongside them were some of the UK's major apple importers: Steve Maxwell of Worldwide Fruit, Greg Hart and Sue Shields of Sydney Hart and Chris Guindi of Richard Hochfeld.

They were joined by Jerry Green, head of wholesale procurement and sales at Greencell, and William Haynes, managing director of European Produce Co.

The French apple export industry was represented by Daniel Corbel, export committee president at Interfel and director of Cardell Export, and Sandrine Gaborieau, director of marketing and communications at the Association National Pommes Poires, as well as a number of representatives from Sopexa.

A full report from the meeting will be published in the February 2011 issue of Eurofruit Magazine.