The new fruit and vegetable Common Market Organisation will be central in the European industry’s agenda in the forthcoming months. And French wholesalers really appreciated that the Commission asked for a wider dialogue before beginning their negotiations.
Freshfel was asked to collate the sector’s views and, as part of this, the French wholesalers’ union proposed some topics for inclusion.
The French paper focuses on two crucial demands: taste and accessibility to produce. These two concepts have dominated the wholesale sector strategy for some time now. They were uppermost in everyone’s mind at the recent Marrakech congress and the partnership between the wholesale trade and France’s independent fresh produce greengrocers is happily becoming much deeper.
Today, technology allows us to be far more precise in our measurement of organoleptic qualities. Wholesalers believe that providing the consumer with taste guarantees and consistent flavours is key to the battle to reverse negative consumption trends and encourage repeat purchase.
On the other hand, the union underlined the necessity to recognise and adapt to a raft of new consumption trends. An increasing proportion of people either eat at their desks in the office or outside - and not necessarily in a restaurant. Street consumption is becoming a big part of the overall equation.
As reported on this page, similarly to the initiative being trialled in central England, a French MP has drawn up a bill for reintroducing vending machines into schools, with an offer excluding chocolate bars, sweets and fizzy drinks and focusing on mineral water and fruits. As you would imagine, wholesalers will be closely surveying the evolution of the proposal in the coming months.
French wholesalers are clearly in step with the prevalent preoccupations of the European fresh produce industry. Far from being isolated in their own commercial area, as recent surveys have tended to suggest, they are neither head-in-the-sand merchants or archaic in their stance when it comes to policy formulation.
At home, the union’s president Bernard Piton recently stood for election as chairman of the almighty Fruit and Vegetable Office. Not that he actually wanted to or dreamed he would succeed. It was what we call a “strong political signal” to the industry. It represented a display of the wholesale sector’s legitimate right to act.
Someone else will probably be elected, but a little birdie has told me that, simply through Piton’s move, conversations in the corridors of power have been rather fruitful. Not up to the standard of Michael Dobbs’ “House of Cards” maybe, but a move in the right political direction.
