"We have had good volumes, but not enough to fill demand," explains Nico. "The Chinese market especially, has been a great success for us. It is the fastest growing market for the brand."
This is ClemenGold's second year with big volumes into China, "They are very happy with our fruit and the brand is becoming well known there, but obviously you need to have a good quality product to back it up."
"In this second year people are now asking for the brand. Every fruit has a PLU label and consumers can identify with the label even if they don't understand English branding. We are also in two retailers with branding banners and tastings and we're on the Guagzhou and Shanghai markets, where we also have big banners with branding. There has been a lot effort to promote the brand."
ClemenGold have also moved to online sales, where they see huge potential, but according to Nico it is still early days.
The South African ClemenGold season started in week 25 and ran till week 36. Packing has now finished and the last fruit will arrive in China in three week's time and might stretch to the end of October.
ClemenGold have not suffered too much from the drought which is hampering some fruit production in South Africa just now. The drought is mainly in the Eastern and Western Cape and, although some ClemenGold fruit is grown there, the biggest percentage is grown in the northern regions of Limpopo and Mpumalanga where it has been a normal season with good quality and no issues.
In January the ClemenGold from Morocco will start and there will also be some from Spain. This will leave a bit of a gap between the South African crop and the start of the Moroccan. "We have started to build the brand now and we are getting partners from around the world to create a 12 month supply," said Nico.
"With a lot of plantings all over the world, we believe we need to have a proper branding strategy to maintain good value for growers over a period of time as production increases. We try to get the best shelf space possible with the retailers."
We are pretty well established in Europe and Canada now and want to concentrate on China and get it right, as it a huge market, before we go looking for more new markets."
For more information:
Nico van StadenCore Fruit
Tel: +27 21 863 6312
Email: [email protected]
www.corefruit.com