By 2017, French bananas grown in Guadeloupe and Martinique will be easily recognisable thanks to a strip of blue, white and red tape. The process will take place in the Dunfresh factory, near Port Ouest, France’s number one banana importer. A machine made specially for this process by the Offranville (Seine-Maritime) ARC company covers 1,200m2.
The band of tape has a bar code on it, allowing clients to directly go to the till, as well as a tracking code with the packaging date. UGPAN (Union of Guadeloupe and Martinique Producer Groups) have invested €650,000 and intend to buy more new machines reaching €2 million in total. The group hopes their production at Loon-Plage will reach a huge 1.4 million bunches per week- which would represent Paris-Biarritz in length of tape !
The bananas will also be sold individually, per piece, in bunches of 3, 4, 5 or 6 fruits, and no longer by weight - stopping them being ripped apart in shops, one of the main factors of banana loss in stores. ARC’s machine will wrap the bananas in packs of 3 to 6 before sending them to the retailers.
500 Leclerc, Intermarché, Cora, Système U and Casino stores all over France are testing this new way of selling and packaging bananas. Eventually, the UGPBAN hopes to use this French banana concept in 4,000 shops all over France, i.e. half of all stores by mid 2017.