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 Wholesale market representatives in Stuttgart 14th GFI general meeting in Stuttgart Members of the development society GFI German Wholesale Markets met in Stuttgart on 11 and 12 November 2008 for their 14th general meeting. This year, as in past years, there was a packed agenda to work through. GFI members have initiated numerous new projects. Marketing measures for 2009
Uwe Kluge re-elected to the Board Apart from the marketing projects, items on the agenda included those required by the statutes, such as the Board’s progress report and the budget for 2009. Uwe Kluge, managing director of Bremen Wholesale Market, stood for re-election to the Board at the end of his four-year term, three of them as chairman, and was unanimously voted into another term of office.
Uwe Kluge thanked members for their confidence and support and once again his verdict was that the meeting had been extremely positive: “An exceptionally amicable and constructive atmosphere has been generated between GFI members. All the members are looking forward to the new projects and will do everything in their power to support implementation at local level.” A new working group for “Benchmarking” has been set up to assist the Association in its tasks. The group will be dealing with the use of sets of key indicators and is the third GFI working group - the other two are Marketing and Public Relations – to which wholesale markets will be contributing their input. The next GFI General Meeting will be held in November 2009 in Duisburg. About GFI German Wholesale Markets. GFI German Wholesale Markets was founded in 2000 and represents the interests of Germany’s 17 major wholesale markets. GFI is the central point of contact for national and international growers seeking to market their produce through quality, independent food retail channels. GFI offers its members a forum for the structured exchange of information and insights on ways to market wholesale markets; it also offers public platforms such as a joint stand at the Fruit Logistica and its own website, www.grossmaerkte.org About German Wholesale Markets. These fresh produce centres guarantee a wide variety of top quality fresh produce, especially fruit and vegetables. At these central, urban trading platforms around 2,600 small and medium sized wholesalers, importers and growers supply fresh produce from the region and all over the world to more than 53,000 customers in the specialist, independent food retail business such as greengrocer shops and street markets and to large-scale caterers and top restaurant chefs. Annual turnover of goods is around 7.4 million tonnes with a total value of roughly 9.8 billion euros. Germany’s wholesale markets thus ensure the availability of good, nutritious food for around 100 million consumers in Germany and neighbouring European countries. Info-Service:
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The PR and media work will continue to concentrate on making both consumers and the business and political communities more aware of wholesale markets. Information material has therefore been updated and there are plans for business PR projects. 
Germany’s wholesale markets will be exhibiting at Fruit Logistica 2009; for the 6th time the markets will be sharing in GFI’s 400 m² stand in hall 21. 
At last year’s fair GFI organized a panel discussion event: a new PR event is planned for Fruit Logistica 2009 and is scheduled for the evening of 5 February. Some 400 guests will be invited to an exclusive event in an unusual location. More details will be announced shortly.
This year new marketing partnerships were added to the well-established, close cooperation with Zespri: collaboration with Sopexa and EOS (Bolzano Chamber of Commerce’s Export Organization for South Tyrol) resulted in a boom in promotions, with more than 100 specials at independent retailers. Sopexa and EOS have thus made good use of the “GFI Freshness Network” consisting of independent retailers at popular street markets, in greengrocery shops and covered markets. Plans for 2009 include further promotional activities with all three partners. At Fruit Logistica talks will be held with other major international growers and marketing organizations.
