Free N.Z. trip for apple sellers

Press, 25 February 1981, Page 11

Free N.Z. trip for apple sellers

PA Nelson A practical thank you to European agents of the Apple and Pear Marketing Board seems to have been well received by the group. Twenty men from Britain, Denmark, tse Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany,. and Switzerland are on a 17-day tour of New Zealand as guests of the board.

They have visited the board’s Stoke apple cannery to see Cox’s Orange apples being treated with calcium to prevent bitterpit disease. Cox’s Orange is the first Southern Hemisphere apple to reach the northern markets.

Mr Roy Barker, a London employee of the board who is accompanying the party, said. “Cox’s; are the key to the door every year. If Cox’s are good we get a head start for the season. If they are poor we have to battle all the way.

“We face strong competition in Europe from South Africa, Australia, Chile, and Argentina but none of them match the consistent quality of New Zealand . fruit. Besides, they have only two or three varieties to offer where we have seven.” Mr Barker said that

agents were so sure of the New Zealand fruit that none of it had to go through the auction system anywhere in Europe. “We pulled out of the last fruit market in Rotterdam six years ago and our fruit still sells regularly above market prices. We cannot get enough New Zealand apples in Europe. We can sell all you send us.” Mr Barker said that the “education tour” of New Zealand was a token of the board’s appreciation of the consistent loyalty and effort given by its agents over the last four years. Last season New Zealand had been the only Southern Hemisphere country to have made a profit on its pip-fruit sales in Europe. Another board agent, Mr Guus van der Kleij, of the Netherlands, made a notable promotional effort last year. His firm advertised New Zealand Sturmer apples on a popular Dutch motor-racing track and gave away 35,000 apples on one race day. .As a result it sold 230,000 cases of Sturmers throughout the Netherlands from May to August, lifting the Sturmer ratings there to third place behind Red Delicious and Granny Smith.