Italian marketing consortium Origine Group is preparing to sell a new variety of red-fleshed kiwifruit alongside existing green and yellow varieties from the 2018/19 season onwards, according to managing director Alberto Garbuglia.
The group is also understood to be targeting increased sales in Spain in particular, a market which it feels there is huge potential to meet latent demand.
With its newly launched kiwifruit brand Sweeki, the group is in fact targeting consumers across Europe and beyond as its supply season kicks off in earnest.
The brand has been the subject of a major marketing push over the past year, with appearances at major trade shows accompanied by efforts to develop closer ties with buyers and importers around the world.
In September, Garbuglia and his team were in Hong Kong to promote the brand as well as Pera Italia pears, and since then the group has also taken the Sweeki message to Macfrut in Italy as well as Fruit Attraction in Madrid.
For Origine, Spain represents a key target market where, it feels, much more can be done in terms of establishing a leading Italian kiwifruit brand.
In fact, one of the main goals for Sweeki – a word conceived as a combination of ‘sweet’ and ‘kiwi’ – is to address the fact that, despite Italy being a world leader in commercial kiwifruit production, the number-one brand of kiwifruit sold in neighbouring Spain is not Italian.
As a result, marketing to the Spanish is one of the group’s priorities this coming season, something it hopes to carry out through a combination of magazine advertising and social media promotion.
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