The South African fruit industry has launched a major initiative to support sales of fresh stonefruit, topfruit and table grapes in the UK.

The cross-category campaign is a three-way venture between the organisations representing South African deciduous fruit, South African grapes and the South African government, and aims to build on the success of this year’s UK and Germany-based pilot campaign to promote the country’s plums, which saw the fruit become the fastest growing fresh produce category and the only stonefruit category experiencing value growth in the UK.

The campaign adopts the ‘Beautiful Country, Beautiful Fruit’ creative, alongside the South African government’s ‘Alive with Possibility’ logo, which promote the nation's fresh produce and tourism sectors respectively.

Beginning with South African grapes in November 2009, the campaign will be joined by peaches and nectarines, plums, pears and apples, continuing through until the end of the apple season in October 2010. Activity will focus on specific times of peak availability for each of the fruits in UK supermarkets.

“We are very pleased to be moving into the second phase of this exciting initiative to raise the profile of South African fresh produce and of the country as a tourist destination,” said Stefan Conradie, product manager for South African stonefruit and topfruit. “The plum campaign achieved excellent growth and has been used as a model to develop activity further for South African fruits.”

As part of the drive in the UK, a range of promotional activities will take place in leading retail outlets, including tastings posters and point-of-sale advertising, with competitions to win a holiday to South Africa and tickets to the 2010 World Cup, which is being held in the country.

These will be supported by advertising, editorial content in retailers’ in-house magazines and websites, and public relations activity involving celebrity chef Sophie Michell and ‘A Place in the Sun’ presenter Jasmine Harman. Additionally, a new website supporting the campaign, www.beautifulcountrybeautifulfruit.com, will be launched to offer information on the products involved in the promotion.

“We are proud to be joining the campaign and look forward to communicating to British shoppers the great taste and diversity of South African grapes,” added Elaine Alexander, executive director for the South African Table Grape Industry. 'Promoting South African grapes alongside stonefruit and topfruit from the country gives South Africa a consistent promotional message for almost 12 months of the year, which is great news for our growers and their retailer customers in the UK.'

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