Consumers across the world may soon be experiencing tastier, fuller-sized blueberries year-round, thanks to a new breeding partnership in blueberries that will bring premium quality berries to customers across the world.

Plant & Food Research and global fresh produce company T&G Global have announced they are entering into a new agreement to breed and commercialise exciting new varieties of blueberries to be sold globally.

The breeding programme will produce new varieties of blueberry that will provide improved yield and resistance to disease while also delivering consumers larger, tastier berries over a longer period, with an extended harvest season.

The first new commercial varieties could be launched globally in the next 12 months under T&G Global’s Orchard Rd brand.

“Blueberries are a key strategic play for us in building our global portfolio, and we’re delighted to build another global category to emulate the success of our premium apple brands. We know there is strong consumer demand for blueberries and teaming up with Plant & Food Research means we get access to a pipeline of world-class varieties,” says Gareth Edgecombe, CEO of T&G Global.

“Securing exclusive rights to the best varieties is the first step in our strategy to build multiple global verticals that drive and enable value and add demand through strong consumer brands,” he says.

The new partnership builds on an existing agreement that grants the global fresh produce grower and marketer, T&G Global, access to a suite of Plant & Food Research-bred and licensed blueberry varieties for production in Australia.

“Plant & Food Research and T&G Global have a strong relationship that began at their legacy organisations in the 1990s,” says David Hughes, CEO Plant & Food Research.

“T&G has an excellent track record of commercialising our varieties, most notably the apples branded JAZZ^™ and Envy^™. We are looking forward to continuing building on this history and delivering excellent blueberries for New Zealand and global consumers,” he says.

Promotional campaign will focus on boosting Chinese consumption of Chilean blueberries, cherries and other products during 2017-18 export season

The Chilean Fruit Exporters Association (ASOEX) has launched its 2017-18 export season for cherries, blueberries and other products in China with a workshop for importers at Shanghai’s Huizhan Fruit Market. At the event, the Chilean organisation presented the new season for fresh fruit exports, focusing special attention on table grapes, cherries, kiwifruit, avocados, plums and blueberries; exports that will be supported by promotions to encourage not only greater consumption, but also the positioning of Chile as the number one supplier of off-season fruits to China.

ASOEX’s Marketing Director for Asia and Europe, Charif Christian Carvajal, said: “We met with importers from the Huizhan Fruit Market in Shanghai, China with the aim of analysing last season’s Chilean fruit exports, and giving advance forecasts for the current campaign, focusing in particular on promotional work that we will carry out to encourage consumption of Chilean blueberries and cherries in China.”

As part of the 2017-18 season promotional campaign in China, ASOEX will hold meetings with fruit importers, buyers and distributors at the Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenyang and Chengdu wholesale markets, in addition to meeting with Shanghai-based importers.

Carvajal said that one of the aims of Chilean fruit sector was to gain access for Chilean fresh pears and citrus to China, as well as increasing consumption of cherries, blueberries, avocados and nectarines. He added that every one of the actions had been made possible thanks to the combined efforts of the Chilean fruit export sector and ProChile through the Promotional Fund for Agriculture Exports of Chile’s Ministry for Agriculture.

Chile is the leading exporter of fresh fruits to the Southern Hemisphere, explained Carvajal, having shipped more than 2.6 million tonnes of fresh fruits to different destinations during the 2016-17 season. Of this total, China accounted for 48.3 % of all Chilean fruit exports to Asia. In terms of products, table grapes were the most exported product to China from Chile during the season, accounting for 42 % of total exports to the country, followed by cherries at 23.5 %, plums at 11.7 %, kiwifruit at 7.6 %, avocados at 5.4 %, red apples at 5 % and blueberries at 3.2 %.

Planned promotions

The Huizhan event also included the participation of Steve Lee, Business Director of Publicis and Patti Sun, CEO of Publicis-partner BetterWay China who had the task of detailing the planned promotional actions for the campaign, including dates and locations. BetterWay China’s Patti Sun said that as well as including a continuing budget of US$5 million for its implementation, the campaign would increase the amount of cities involved.

“During the last campaign, we included 37 cities that corresponded to Tiers 1, 2 and 3, and this year we want to reach 58, which will also include Tier 4 and 5 cities and the potential for consumption they represent,” she said. “As well as this, to better coordinate and control the campaign, we will be hiring an expert in China.”
Publicis’ Steven Lee added that some of aspects of the campaign that would be enhanced this season by actions focused on E-commerce and wholesale markets.

“Although the results of the last campaign were very positive, there are aspects we would like to improve, particularly after gathering feedback from the Chilean fruit sector,” he explained. “For this reason, we are expanding work at an E-commerce level by continuing what we are already doing with T-mall and JD.com, but also increasing our participation on other platforms at a regional level. We will also be increasing our promotional actions for wholesale markets.”

Blueberries

Looking at the blueberry promotional campaign, Carvajal said this would begin with online promotional actions in collaboration with Miss Fresh App and KOL to generate messages on social media, as well as launching advertising on vending machines. The campaign will also include appearances in Chinese media outlets, such as CCTV, Sina, Ifeng, DTV, and others.

“In terms of point-of-sale marketing, we will be carrying out activities in 10 cities, three retail chains, three wholesale markets, 22 hypermarkets and 200 Pagoda specialist fruit shops; actions which we be key to boosting consumption of Chilean blueberries,” added Carvajal. “The activities will kick off two weeks before Chinese New Year, with the aim of directly reaching 308 people per store.”