The South African Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) has confirmed that plans to hold promotions for South African grapefruit this year in the UK and Japan have been scrapped.
“After growers initially indicated interest in these promotions, we had a very poor response when it came to voluntary contracting to raise the funds to run these campaigns,” says the CGA’s Justin Chadwick. 'We have therefore decided to discontinue these campaigns until we get a clear mandate from more than 70 per cent of the growers to proceed.”
Chadwick explained that growers had previously agreed to sign two-year contracts to hold these campaigns.
“We ran campaigns in both the UK and Japan in 2010 and 2011 and were pleased with the initial results,' he said. 'We must understand however that it takes some time before one can really measure the success, and we were hoping that we could continue for at least four years.”
The decision to discontinue the grapefruit campaigns comes on the heels of an earlier decision by the South African exporters association, FPEF, to first cancel and then re-instate a dramatically scaled down South African presence at Asia Fruit Logistica in September.
The South African participation was only salvaged after intervention by the deciduous sector, most notably Hortgro and SATI, to fill the vacuum left by a withdrawal of support from the government.
The stonefruit and apple and pear sectors are still continuing their international promotional campaigns in the UK and Germany. Consideration is now being given to extending these campaigns to East Asia.
Hortgro spokesman Jacques du Preez confirmed that the stonefruit and pome sectors are not receiving any government support for their campaigns.
FPEF spokesman Anton Kruger says the industry feels that it does not need a full pavilion at Asia Fruit Logistica in Hong Kong.
'We are also meeting the government again next week to see if we can get these important fresh produce events re-instated on the government’s roster of support,' said Kruger. 'In the long term we have to find a long-term sustainable model of funding for these events.”
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