Spanish fresh produce organisation Hortyfruta has been forced into a radical re-think of its Lola brand after it was discovered that an Italian company has already registered a similarly named trademark.
Lola was created by Almeria-based Hortyfruta, a pan-sectoral group that represents the interests of fruit and vegetable growers and exporters in Andalusia, as a means of increasing awareness of the region’s products across European markets.
The brand, whose full name was ‘Lola & Paco: Andalusian Fresh Produce’ was officially launched by Hortyfruta in November 2008, but only made its debut on cartons of Unica-branded products a year later at Fruit Attraction 2009.
However, the organisation has been forced to withdraw the Lola name after Europe’s brand registration office ruled that Italian fresh produce company Dal Bello had already registered the brand for its products, which are imported through its subsidiary SIFE.
A spokesman for Hortyfruta told Eurofruit that the brand was being renamed L&P Andalusian Fresh Produce, although he admitted that the L&P name was ultimately likely to be completely removed from the brand logo.
“We had to take the word ‘Lola’ out of the brand, so it has now been registered as L&P Andalusian Fresh Produce, alongside the image of the flamenco dancer,” he said. “But eventually it will just be the dancer alongside Andalusian Fresh Produce.”
The spokesman said Hortyfruta was still hopeful that the reworked logo could be used by its member companies in some form during the 2010/11 export campaign.
