German wholesale markets association GFI is planning to increase the number of marketing partnerships it runs with fresh produce brand owners following positive reactions to a series of summer campaigns which involved key marketers including Pink Lady apples, South Tyrol PGI apples and Zespri kiwifruit.
The organisation says it plans to organise further promotional events in Germany during the autumn, having held some 50 successful promotions at street markets, in greengrocer shops and retail market halls together with marketing partners EOS, the Bolzano chamber of commerce’s South Tyrolean export organisation, and Zespri International.
Uwe Kluge, GFI board member for marketing, said he was delighted that 2008 had set new records: 'Including the Pink Lady promotions we organised with Sopexa in February, we have already held 100 special events for quality conscious shoppers this year.”
In May, in the week before Whitsun, GFI organised 20 parallel promotions for EOS in six cities – Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Cologne, Stuttgart and Munich. Then, from the end of May to the beginning of July, the group ran a total of 10 promotions for Zespri in Bremen, Hamburg, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Munich and Leipzig. In both cases, the promotional activity was on a larger scale than ever before.
According to Mr Kluge, however, there is still a great deal of potential to build on the marketing partnerships strategy. “There is no sign of the promotion boom ending,' he said. 'The increasing popularity of our fresh produce network enables producers and marketers to implement their brand strategy without restrictions. We’ll be having more promotions in the autumn.”
GFI was founded in 2000 and represents the interests of Germany’s 17 major wholesale markets, forming a central point of contact for national and international growers seeking to market their produce through quality, independent food retail channels. GFI offers its members a forum for the structured exchange of information and insights on ways to market wholesale markets; it also offers public platforms such as a joint stand at the Fruit Logistica and its own website, www.grossmaerkte.org.
German wholesale markets are increasingly looking to guarantee a wide variety of top quality fresh produce, especially fruit and vegetables. At these central, urban trading platforms around 2,600 small- and medium-sized wholesalers, importers and growers supply fresh produce from the region and all over the world to more than 53,000 customers in the specialist, independent food retail business such as greengrocer shops and street markets and to large-scale caterers and top restaurant chefs.
Annual turnover of goods through the German markets system is around 7.4m tonnes, with a total value of roughly €9.8bn, with a sphere of influence encompassing some 100m consumers in Germany and neighbouring European countries.
