I must admit to a degree of nostalgia when as a guest of Sopexa, I enjoyed their 40th birthday celebrations last week. It seems only a wink in time since I was the first journalist timidly asked whether I would like to go to France to see Golden Delicious orchards being planted in the south west. The variety was unknown by the British public. France was unrecognised for its potential.
Marketing of fruit in the early days, when the London office opened under Bruno Sterlin, was still a relatively an untapped science.
Sopexa was even hard pressed to find anyone in the Paris office who spoke English to accompany me. The result however was a week's tour via Nimes, Avignon and Toulouse, punctuated with gargantuan meals twice daily - as well as some groundbreaking stories.
Forty years on, facility visits are less leisurely and have changed considerably. Journalists are whisked around at a speed comparable with the in-and-out flying visits made by supermarket buyers and their category partners.
At the same time, concepts of promotion have also changed. There was a time when TV ruled the roost - but you don't see much fruit and veg advertising on the small screen these days. Instead budgets throughout the industry are stretched in different directions, and more often than not tailored to the the individual requests of specific customers.
To its credit the French machine rolled on, and it can be said, became the subject of much envy from other industries and national promotional organisations. To illustrate, Sopexa's latest research reveals that Goldens are still strongly associated with France - surely a tribute to the strength of the Le Crunch campaign which has permeated the UK psyche.
And over the years Sopexa has been involved in considerable activity enhancing other crops. Stonefruit is still going strong, with French peaches and nectarines now competing successfully with the giant Italian crop on the UK market. When I worked in the old Covent Garden in the 1950s, such a thought would have been unthinkable.
Other French produce in promotional terms has been as varied as winter salads and pears, grapes, chicory and even at one stage bananas from Martinique, although they only sparkled in the PR firmament for brief periods.
Also at such a time of goodwill it would a grave injustice not to remember the Brittany region which, with true Gallic independence preferred for many years to plough its own deep and successful furrow and still idolises such crops as cauliflower, new potatoes, salads and artichokes.
The most obvious lesson to be learned is that continuity pays off. While Sopexa in my view has done an outstanding job, it has only been able to do so because the growers it represents have kept faith - particularly at a time when margins are dwindling and everyone is trying to cut costs along the distribution chain.
