As in international cricket, South Africa is Australia’s current main competitor in the apple and pear export market. However, Horticulture Australia’s “Australia Fresh” program aims to ensure Australian producers can get more runs on the board.

Australia Fresh brings together Australian producers under an umbrella brand and offers the gamut of promotional activities: trade exhibitions, point-of-sale, loyalty and incentive programs, competitions and demonstrations/samplings.

An enhancement of an existing program, Australia Fresh was funded by industry and individual companies. Between April and September last year, a record 65 promotions were conducted in nine export markets, driving up sales in India, Sri Lanka, South East Asia, Indonesia and New Zealand, among other markets.

Via a two-tiered system, exporters under the Australia Fresh brand are able to better attract attention in the crowded supermarket market – without losing the brand identities and subsequent relationships they’ve established with wholesalers and importers.

“Where we see Australia Fresh can add value is at the point of sale with consumers,” said Trudy Gosney, assistant marketing manager (export promotions) with Horticulture Australia. “We’ve seen in the past – and this is not to discredit the success individual companies have had – market failure with smaller companies trying to develop a brand. Australia Fresh is a way of creating some critical mass in the market.”

You’ll get no arguments about the benefits of Australia Fresh from the Australian Fresh Food Network’s Ken McGillen.

“It’s an initiative that’s been the most significant from a body like Horticulture Australia in the last 10 to 15 years and it suits us down to the ground because we deal with a lot of supermarkets.”
He added that as market consolidation continued, Australia Fresh was the way of the future for Australian growers. “It’s a real challenge if you think you can promote your brand in markets. With Australia Fresh we’ve been able to highlight some of the key differences between our product and South Africa’s, who have such a strong presence via supermarket groups.”

Kevin Baddily from Tasfresh International (Tasmania) was equally buoyant about Australia Fresh.

“Having Horticulture Australia working closely with us and our buyers has produced wonderful results, even in markets where we had tried to promote for over 13 years without success,” he said. “Horticulture Australia in its first year of trying was able to arrange a highly successful promotion that thrilled our buyer.”

Mr Baddily echoed Mr McGillen’s comments about the difficulty of promoting individual fruit brands in international markets. His first-hand experience of how a brand can be swamped made joining Australia Fresh a no-brainer.

“I visited a prominent Asian supermarket chain where our apples were being sold and was horrified to see them being sold under a hand-written banner saying ‘USA Apples’.”

Apple producer Australian Farm Link is new to the export game. Heather Churchill from the company said Australia Fresh offered immediate leverage in export markets.

“Promotions have definitely assisted us in getting good sales contracts to supply the supermarkets, and allowed us to keep a market share where it was diminishing due to global competition and change in variety preferences,” she said.

However, she added that her company would only remain attached to the program if it remained cost effective and reflected Australian Farm Link’s needs. She was of the opinion that, generally, generic marketing doesn’t work.

“It’s only as strong as its weakest link,” she said.
Ms Churchill was also concerned about the program’s timing – especially for this year – in regard to when her company would need to fund the project, and in terms of their crop situation.
Ms Gosney said these were issues that Horticulture Australia were taking into account.

“From past experiences we have been told by some markets and some customers in those markets that we should be looking at doing promotions earlier,” she said.

Ms Gosney added that in order to be accepted onto international supermarkets’ annual promotions calendars, Horticulture Australia needed to be in early communication with the supermarkets.
“From that point of view we’re not saying to producers you have to commit your whole money and we’re going to go and spend it now”, Ms Gosney said. “We’re saying give us an indication of what markets you’d like to develop and we’ll start talking with those customers now.”

She said Horticulture Australia was in communication with Australia Fresh member exporters throughout the season to ensure promotions were supported by product and particular product varieties.

Peter Thompson from Geoffery Thompson and Growers Co-operative said Australia Fresh meant his company’s pears had more “oomph” when placed beside South African competitors. “It allowed us to do promotions and to be a little more exciting in a pretty 'commodisised' category.”

Mr Thompson said the biggest advantage of Australia Fresh for his smaller company was that all the promotions legwork was done for it.

“I was pretty happy with it and I think our buyers appreciated it. And I think we’ll get better at it – it’s not something you just do once and leave it,” he said, adding that, when all is said and done, he’d prefer to promote his own brand. However, he admitted that while the “Geoff Thompson” label was well known in wholesale markets, consumers did not have the same awareness.

Mr Baddily from Tasfresh International also said it was tough for his company to relegate its brand to the end panel of an Australia Fresh carton. However, he said the company is glad it took “a leap of faith” to be involved with the initiative.

“The aim of every business is to gain name or brand recognition and Australia Fresh has the greatest chance of achieving this on export markets . . . Why wouldn’t you want to be part of it?”

Ms Gosney said Australia Fresh wouldn’t meet every exporter’s needs. “[But] it’s an approach that can be used to promote products under one umbrella at the point of purchase. We don’t discount members’ brands from the wholesaler/importer level; they’re their company brands and they’ve worked very hard with their importers to create relationships and develop that history.”