“We want our Bouquet seedless watermelon to be the Star of the summer”

Watermelon season is in full swing at Anecoop France, which is currently putting the spotlight on one of its flagship products: the premium Bouquet Stars seedless watermelon that the cooperative has set out across Europe. "This is our strategic product, positioned in the premium segment, with plenty of supply," explains Camille Broussoux, trade marketing and communication manager at Anecoop France.

Anecoop France is seeking to democratize this top-quality product on the French market. "We are very strict about the quality of our Bouquet Stars seedless watermelons, which meet precise specifications. We want to make this product accessible and focus our communication efforts on democratizing consumption in French households."

Modernizing watermelon consumption and diversifying the range
To achieve this goal, Anecoop France intends to "modernize consumption" by "bringing pleasurable flavors" to a range of watermelons that the company hopes to diversify. "We offer a wide range: red, black, yellow, mini - all seedless - as well as micro seed and Zagora, organic watermelons and local watermelons from the Roussillon. To ensure that everyone can enjoy watermelons, we have developed a highly successful sliced watermelon segment, thanks to a slicing site in France. This helps to avoid waste and meets current consumer trends in terms of practicality. It also highlights other products such as yellow watermelons, which are characterized by their flesh rather than their rind."

Watermelon consumption generally on the rise
In terms of consumption, despite the unfavorable weather, sales since the start of the season have been similar to the last two years. "We really started the campaign in April, which continued in May and will accelerate in June. Of course, as watermelons are a particularly climate-dependent fruit, we are penalized when the weather is not good. If we have a sunny month of May, we will sell a lot more. Since 2011, watermelon consumption has been increasing steadily. Today, 4 out of 10 French households buy 2.2 kg/person of watermelon (compared with 8 out of 10 for melons (Kantar 2021)), which is why we need to focus on democratizing our product.

We are also relatively confident about the rest of the campaign, as it fits perfectly with the Olympic Games in France."

22,000 tons of watermelons marketed in 2024
This year's campaign should reach 20,000 tons for conventional watermelons and 2,000 tons for organic ones. "Our crops are currently benefiting from weather conditions that are favorable to production, with neither surplus nor deficit. We recently finished harvesting in Almeria, and we have started harvesting watermelons in the Murcia region. We are therefore in the midst of peak production, which will enable us to launch in-store promotional actions, supported by TV commercials, in late June/early July."