Seen and heard at IFPA's Global Produce and Floral Show 2024 — Part 2

ATLANTA — New products, new campaigns and loads of innovation filled the sprawling expo floor at the 2024 International Fresh Produce Association's Global Produce and Floral Show, Oct. 17-19, at the Georgia World Congress Center, which celebrated the “Joy of Fresh.”

When it comes to greenhouse-grown produce, key advantages are consistent quality, flavor and year-round supply, says Pure Flavor's Julia Shreve, who showcased a number of the Leamington, Ontario-based grower's latest products at the IFPA show, including its new Amōra, a personal-size, juicy melon variety that hails from France.

“It's a really nice personal melon size that's easy to scoop and serve with granola, yogurt and more,” said Shreve, who added that serving suggestions are featured on the back of the melon's label. Amōra melons are shipping now, she said.

Pure Flavor also showcased its super sweet, multicolor seedless peppers that are grown naturally without seeds, said Shreve.

Also on tap at the Pure Flavor booth were an array of greenhouse-grown tomatoes, including Cloud 9, Tiki, OMG and its newest tomato, Rocco Reds, which the greenhouse grower has dubbed “The Chef's Tomato.”

The Wonderful Company shared its newest products, POS and latest promotional campaigns across its family of brands including POM Wonderful, Wonderful Citrus, and Wonderful Pistachios at the recent IFPA show in Atlanta.

POM Wonderful is reprising its campaign that encourages consumers to fortify their defenses against free radicals by protecting themselves with the antioxidant power of POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice.

“It's especially important this time of year,” said Stacey Anker.

The California-based company also has a robust social media campaign planned, with TV personality Chrissy Teigen set to tour the Wonderful Company's pomegranate orchards in October to provide content for a social campaign slated to hit in November, which is National Pomegranate Month.

While it may be an “off year” for pistachios, Wonderful Pistachios is looking ahead to a strong holiday season and 2025 with new products, a packaging refresh, new display units and more.

Just in time for the holidays, Wonderful Pistachios Sweet Cinnamon Pistachios offers a healthy indulgence item for the season, says Diana Salsa. Complementing the new offering is a Rudolph-inspired holiday merchandising unit to showcase Wonderful Pistachios.

The company's unsalted, in-shell pistachios are currently its No. 3 product, so it expects its new no-salt, no-shell pistachios to be well received, said Salsa.

What's next? Salsa says look for a brand refresh on the company's pistachio packaging next year that will bring back its popular “Get Crackin'” messaging.

“We're always continuously improving our packaging with beautiful colors that customers recognize,” she said.

Wondeful Citrus showed off its seedless lemons and Wonderful Halos.

“A lot of consumers don't know seedless lemons exist,” said Jennifer Hirano. “But once they know they exist, they can't go back to lemons with seeds.”

Wonderful Citrus plans to amplify its marketing efforts around seedless lemons in 2025, said Hirano, who added the company will put three times the marketing power behind the product beginning in January 2025. From a lemonade stand-style in-store display unit to 200 Wonderful Citrus brand ambassadors hitting stores across the country, the company plans to put its seedless lemons in front of shoppers in 2025.

For Halos, Wonderful Citrus' Josh Yahr says the company is launching a new omnichannel marketing campaign that's “its largest in years.” The campaign will seek to further position Wonderful Halos as a nutritious, delicious and convenient snack.

“As consumers continue to look for convenient snacking, we anticipate demand for Wonderful Halos to be high in the coming season,” Yahr said.

“We're focused on education, marketing and presentation of tropicals,” said J&C Tropicals' Christian Hosford. On the education front, the company is focused on increasing consumers' understanding of the nutritional value of tropical fruits, which unlike CPG products, don't have an ingredient label to inform the consumer about the item's nutrient deck, he said.

When it comes to marketing and presentation, the company has a number of tools to help retailers, including a tropicals display case that can merchandise anywhere from four to 16 products.

“It's a self-contained, fresh tropical produce center,” said Hosford.

The company also featured a number of new and innovative products from Namzen, a fresh coconut drink from Thailand that Hosford says is “very trendy,” to other products in development that the company plans to bring to market in the year ahead. These up-and-comers include a dried tropical fruit medley, protein power bites and a dried fruit garnish line.

“We are a distributor, but we're also tropical fruit education advisers who think like healthy grocers,” said Hosford. “We are focused on bringing transparency to the customer and doing that in a tropical gourmet way.”

Spice World's Chris Kiser says the company is on a mission to help consumers “elevate the way they eat with fresh convenient flavor.”

In recent consumer surveys, Spice World has found that consumers, and younger shoppers in particular, want both convenience and flavor from products like its Fresh Diced Garlic in a resealable bag, Peeled Ginger in a resealable bag, Garlic and Ginger Fusion in a jar, and Kickin' Chili Onion Crunch in a jar.

“Our Kickin' Chili Onion Crunch is going gangbusters,” said Kiser about the product that plays well with Japanese, Thai and Korean dishes and more. “Consumers want that burst of flavor in a way that it makes it easy and convenient,” he added.

Clean labels are also important to today's consumer, says Kiser. Take our Fresh Diced Garlic, he says, noting the product is preservative-free.

Spice World sees continued product innovation on the horizon.

“Our pipeline is full,” said Kiser. “It's all about listening to the consumer and giving them what they want.”

At the Mucci Farms' booth, the greenhouse grower featured its Savorries sweet strawberry tomatoes. The tomato brown rugose fruit virus-resistant fruit is the company's fasted growing SKU in 2024, says Ajit Saxena.

Mucci has significantly expanded its plantings of Savorries to meet demand, Saxena said.

“It's also known as the helicopter tomato because you can grab it by the stem and twirl it,” Saxena added about the high-flavor greenhouse-grown tomato. 

Jeanne Wilson of Zespri International shared the company's latest sustainability effort and details on its popular KiwiBrothers campaign.

Zespri International and Sinclair debuted their new sustainable collaboration at the IFPA show, which puts Sinclair's T55 home-compostable label on Zespri kiwifruit — a move the companies call “a major step forward in sustainable packaging.”

“We've always had a strong value around guardianship,” said Wilson. “We're always looking at what in our packaging streams can we improve on. A label may seem small, but when you think about its scale globally, it's significant.”

The Zespri booth also showcased its KiwiBrothers campaign that has the brothers traveling the globe inviting consumers to “Taste the Obsession.”

The popular campaign is not just about kids, says Wilson, who adds the campaign has reached over 1 billion impressions this last season.

“Zespri has been the No. 1 selling kiwi brand for some time now,” said Wilson. “We sell five times the number of kiwis as the next closest supplier.”

And the company is eyeing continued growth moving forward.

“There so much opportunity to drive category growth with both Sungold and green kiwifruit,” Wilson said.

Your next read:

• Fresh 'worth fighting for,' says IFPA CEO Cathy Burns

• Seen and heard at IFPA's Global Produce and Floral Show 2024 — Part 1