The Avocado Export Company (AEC), one of Australia’s largest avocado exporters, has ramped up its buyer training programme in Asia this year ahead of the country’s Hass season.
The AEC, which trades as Avoz Exports and sells under the Auspak brand, has boosted its buyer and retail training programmes in the region to counteract the high value of the Australian dollar, according to the company’s general manager Louis Grey.
“We just finished a programme in Singapore and Malaysia which had an excellent response, and the main emphasis was for supermarkets to give customers an option of ready-to-eat and also hard fruit,” Mr Grey told Fruitnet.com.
The programme in Malaysia was complemented in supermarkets there by promotional materials organised by the AEC’s Malaysian importer Euro Atlantic, and was capped by an appearance on national television.
Euro Atlantic’s marketing manager Adrian Ung appeared on a 15-minute breakfast TV slot on Malaysian channel NTV7 on 25 April, explained Mr Grey. “Adrian had a 15 minute session talking about Australian avocados,” he detailed. “That’s a first for Australian avocados in any Asian country. That was a big scoop.”
Following on from Singapore and Malaysia, the AEC will also start a training programme with retailers in mid-May in Thailand, followed by programmes in Hong Kong and Dubai.
This year the AEC’s programmes have focused its retail training on how to handle Australian avocados, and how best to display and market them to consumers. The company’s key message of providing both ready-to-eat conditioned fruit as well as firm fruit has proven a winner with retailers in previous years’ training programmes, according to Mr Grey.
“`Supermarket chain` Jusco in Kuala Lumpur came back to us and said that since they switched over last year and started to sell ready-to-eat fruit, they have increased their sales and dropped wastage,” he said. “It’s really been beneficial.
“Overall we’ve been quite lucky with what we’ve achieved up to now. It’s been great for us, and we’re looking at quite an increase in our exports this season.”
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