South African citrus producer group Gogo has announced that its European marketing activities will be managed by two Dutch companies for the 2013 season.
According to Gogo's marketing director, Eben Kruger, Cool Fresh International and 4Fruit Company have been placed in charge of the campaign following the positive co-operation built up between the companies since 2000.
'The time has come to streamline our activities,' he said, 'specifically with regard to global marketing.'
He added that the group was looking for strong long-term marketing partnerships to ensure that its 'objectives for growth, intelligent marketing and cost control are achieved'.
“The producers behind the Gogo Group have been cooperating with Cool Fresh and 4Fruit Company since 2000, and the relationships have always been positive,” said Kruger. “For this reason we have decided to appoint these two companies to manage our European marketing activities.”
Another aim for Gogo is remain in control of the fruit at every stage of the process, while avoiding situations where its products are competing with themselves via different receivers.
Jan Bakker of 4Fruit commented: 'Supplying consistently the best quality citrus direct from the farm to our clients will result in a more efficient cost chain. We want to guarantee realistic and fair prices in the retail, wholesale and food service markets, and the only way to achieve this is if all parties work together.'
Niels Stolk and Hugo Vermeulen of Cool Fresh International added: “We believe that our group’s global structure and key characteristics will play a solid role in achieving the objectives which Gogo has set for itself. Because of the fact that we have been working on the basis of strategic partnerships with producers for quite some time, we are convinced that we have the right model for success.”
According to Kruger, Gogo currently exports around 1.5m cartons (940 containers) of citrus per year. By 2015, he believes, this volume will more than double.
