Kiwifruit goes 'home' to China with class

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Yujan Chen does the fruit marketing version of taking coals to Newcastle - he sells kiwifruit to its place of origin, China.

The Zespri International general manager for East Asia said the latter-day Chinese gooseberry fetched a high price in China, retailing for about $2 each.

He disparaged the locally grown product, calling it a monkey peach, and said the misshapen fruit would be deemed second or third class if produced in New Zealand.

The high quality of New Zealand kiwifruit and its marketing guaranteed success throughout a region that included Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, said Taiwan-born Mr Chen.

"Nobody can do what we do. We have the economy of scale to enable us to do a lot of marketing."

The confident Mr Chen, who is based in Tokyo, was in the Bay of Plenty last week escorting visiting Japanese fruit retailers and wholesalers who between them handle two million trays of New Zealand kiwifruit a year.

About 100 people from his region take such tours each year in what he said was one of the most effective promotions.

The tour parties returned home to talk enthusiastically to their customers about New Zealand and the orchards and packhouses where they had seen kiwifruit.

Despite the two-year-old economic downturn in Asia and falling fruit consumption in Japan, kiwifruit still sold well in the region, which last year took 15 million of a 50 million tray crop, Mr Chen said.

"We are less than 1 per cent of the whole fresh-fruit category in the region. It is easy to grow from there, taking a bit off apples, a bit off citrus.

"If you are 80 per cent of the market and you want to grow to 85 per cent, it is a lot harder."

Mr Chen, who speaks Mandarin, Taiwanese, English and Japanese and got his second degree, an MBA, in Switzerland, said he found marketing New Zealand kiwifruit hard going when he began six years ago.

Zespri's forerunner, the Kiwifruit Marketing Board, had just cut the number of importers in Japan from eight to one, damaging relationships and creating bad feeling.

"Six years ago we had a lot of enemies. We still use one importer but he now shares with the others.

"It took a whole year to win them around," he said.

The next goal was to improve relationships with wholesalers.

Now sales targets were set each year and bonuses shared when the targets were met or surpassed.

Retailers were promised a promotional budget equal to 5 per cent of kiwifruit sales turnover.

At the consumer level, Mr Chen said promotions focused on kiwifruit's nutritional values over such competitors as apples and mandarins.

Last year, roadshows incorporating distinctively painted green Volkswagen Beetles as a focus for kiwifruit tastings were tried successfully in Japan for the first time.

Consumers' positive reaction to the ready-to-eat kiwifruit they were offered compared with the still-hard fruit they could buy in stores prompted this year's target for Mr Chen.

"The wholesalers and retailers want hard fruit and not to take risks [with damaged fruit] but we have to give the customer ready-to-eat fruit."