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FAIR TRADE LABEL DELIGHTS SWISS MARKET...
(Banana Trade News Bulletin, July l997)
Five years after its creation, the Max Havelaar Foundation (Switzerland) launched its first labelled fresh product: bananas. After many years preparation, numerous visits to producing countries, several months of negotiations with producers, exporters and licence holders, the preparations were finally concluded. On 18 March 1997, the Swiss banana market acquired a new dimension: for the first time, consumers were able to choose between conventional and fairly traded bananas. Within a few weeks, the Max Havelaar bananas achieved a level of sales which represents 10% of the Swiss market. Three months later, they represent not less than 13% of the total consumption in Switzerland.The launching of fairly traded bananas on the Swiss market followed two years of preparation with small and medium-scale producers in Ecuador. In Switzerland, COOP has imported 1,000 boxes a week since July 1996 to test the ability of producers and importers to supply good quality and to respect delivery schedules. These bananas did not bear the Max Havelaar label, but were already being sold with the fair trade premium. These experimental deliveries allowed Max Havelaar to gain the confidence of producers, and for the companies and the supermarkets involved, to test the reliability of the supply chain. Fair trade bananas are sold in the supermarkets MIGROS and COOP - which together represent 70% of Swiss banana sales - and in several retail shops, thanks to the company AG fur Fruchthandel/safruits. They are imported through a German import company: T. Port GmbH., based in Hamburg. In Switzerland, GEBANA, the Association for Fair Trade in Bananas, has acted as a pioneer on banana issues. From the 1970s, a womens' group - Frauenfelder Bananenfrauen has consistently and courageously denounced the abuses committed on banana plantations in Latin America as well as the difficult and dangerous working conditions, raising consumer awareness through the sale of a "solidarity" banana, whose concept is different from the Max Havelaar banana.
Rolf Buser, director of the Max Havelaar Foundation, presented, in his introduction speech on March 18th, the work of Max Havelaar as an attempt to widen the supply of the Swiss market, in so far as 'fair trade' labelled bananas are now available in two of the biggest supermarket chains, for a price only slightly above the average price offered by the multinationals. The first products labelled by Max Havelaar Switzerland (coffee, honey, cocoa, and sugar) came from small family farms. Tea was the first certified fair trade product which came from bigger plantations. The Max Havelaar bananas are imported from Ecuador where half of them are produced by small farmers (4 to 10 hectares) and the other half by middle-sized plantations of ca. 50 to 100 hectares. The producers under contract to Max Havelaar receive a minimum guaranteed price of US$7.75 per box of 18,4 kg, which covers in addition to the cost of production, processing and packaging a premium of US$1.75 per box for investments in social infrastructure, human resource development, ecological improvements and business development.
(Sources: Max Havelaar launch releases, 18.3.97; Gebana bulletin, 3.97.)
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