From Driscoll’s in the global berry trade to Shenzhen YuanXing’s YumSun in China, 2016 has been a year of widespread rebranding in the industry and one of Australia’s leading produce companies has just joined the party.

Perfection Fresh had the same brand for around 18 years before a recent decision was made to adopt a “vintage postcard” look across all its items, with illustrations linking back to the produce’s Australian source. 

CEO Michael Simonetta told www.freshfruitportal.com the new brand would be for both domestic and export markets.

“How it all started was we were looking at all the labels we pack in one of our packhouses. It was just so inefficient – all these different labels for different products, different graphic designs,” he said.

“It just became obvious to us that if we were confused, how were consumers feeling about it?

“We thought we really needed to have consumers understand and know that products they love like Broccolini come from the same home as some of the other products like the Baby Qukes, the Roma Therapy tomatoes, the Calypso mangoes and so on.”

He said the new branding was an evolution of the previous brand, which carried the tagline “leading the fresh food revolution”.

“Now we’re setting the path for the journey of the next 18-20 years I guess, and that’s all about exploring the world of taste,” he said.

In a release relating to the rebrand, Simonetta mentioned how during the recent Produce Marketing Association (PMA) Fresh Summit it was highlighted branded produce sales experienced 12% compounded annual growth since 2011.

“This new look and feel is taking advantage of this global trend of branded fresh produce and ongoing interest from consumers to know more about the source and origin of their fruit and vegetables. We see that this trend will resonate here in Australia,” he said in the release. 

Perfection Fresh CEO Michael Simonetta

“It will also lay the foundation for our next 10 years and beyond. We already have big plans for 2017 including the launch of new products and further investment in production.”

He told www.freshfruitportal.com this included the upcoming launch of fresh ready-to-eat, pre-washed table grapes with its FruitMaster business, as well as the release of new mango varieties.

Regarding the tropical fruit, Simonetta plans to visit Peru, Mexico, Spain and parts of Africa next year to explore opportunities for licensing its trademarked Calypso mangoes and is open to new grower contacts around the world and at trade fairs like Fruit Logistica which is due to take place in Berlin in February.

The executive highlighted Perfection Fresh's branded item Broccolini had been a key product over recent years with double-digit annual growth, but in 2016 the two “main stars” had been Sweet Solonato tomatoes and the trademarked baby Qukes.

These crops were bred in the Netherlands and have found strong demand in the Australian market.

Weather effects on table grapes

He added table grape crops were running two to three weeks late in Australia’s southern states this season, while hail had also set back a lot of growers.

“That’s because of the cold, wet winter we had in the southern states, so that’ll [table “” not found /]
start when the Sunraysia district starts harvest, so that’s after Christmas.

“One of our farms was 100% wiped out [by hail]. The other two were thankfully untouched. The ATGA (Australian Table Grape Association) has estimated 15% of the crop this year has been wiped out because of the hailstorm.

“We’re more fortunate – the ones that are less fortunate are the growers who only have one farm and we’re 100% wiped out, and a few of those growers are some of our licensed growers, so my heart goes out to them more so than even ourselves because we’ve still got two farms to go.”

www.freshfruitportal.com