The California Cherry Board, which is administered by Ag Association Management Services Inc. in Sacramento, CA, has “a very focused effort” on specific areas of concern to the industry, according to Chris Zanobini, president and chief executive officer of AAMS.

“Our primary areas of activities are research, export developments and market trade policy, industry statistics, and any issues that might [affect] the industry,” Zanobini told The Produce News April 8. “We don’t do any domestic marketing and promotions.”

Export markets as well as the domestic market are very important to the California cherry industry, he said, “but the export market is a little more complicated because every country has different parameters.”

Chris ZanobiniAs a board, “we are trying to work on a couple of different fronts” in export markets, he said. “One is to embrace new markets that are showing a lot of potential, like Korea and China.” Also, the board continues to “look at ways that we can improve and maintain our current good markets like Canada and Japan.”

The board is making “a very significant effort in Japan this year to educate the importers and the retail trade and make sure that everybody is on the same page, so we can send the very best possible quality“ fruit to that market, he said. “There have been number of efforts on that front.”

For example, “in Japan, we are working on a size promotion where we are promoting some additional resources for those folks who bring in a larger piece of fruit” in addition to the size they are already using. That “really helps” sales, he said. Larger “is much more impressive and drives a higher retail.” The board is “trying to put some incentives” in place in an effort to “get the Japanese trade to bring in bigger fruit along with the fruit that they are currently bringing in. Having two different sizes of fruit might help expand the market which has been somewhat flat the last couple of years.”

South Korea “has a tremendous amount of potential,” Zanobini said. “There is a pretty good effort on the board’s behalf in Korea” to help producers realize that potential.

“We also see a lot of opportunity in China,” he added, “although we would like to understand the market a little bit better. We are hopefully going to continue to obtain more information and do a better job of getting quality fruit” to consumers in China. Getting fruit into the country is not the problem. “We can get the fruit to China,” he said. “It is what happens when it gets on the ground there that we are trying to get a better understanding of.”