Bananas faring well in drive for ethical trading

Hana Garrett-Walker | 22nd July 2010

ETHICAL: Alan Wilkinson, the store manager for Moore Wilson's, Masterton, is happy to be selling fair trade bananas. PICTURE / LYNDA FERINGA

Fair trade bananas are flying off Moore Wilson's shelves in Masterton despite Oxfam warning demand needs to pick up or New Zealand may lose the ethical fruit.

Moore Wilson's store manager Alan Wilkinson said it started stocking fair trade bananas over a month ago after demand spilled over from its Wellington store.

''The majority of our bananas are fair trade ... we are buying more and more.''
He said all the produce was brought over from the Wellington store six days a week.

He said it was difficult to put a price on produce because it varied with supply and demand but fair trade bananas were sold in the vicinity of $2.95 per kilogram and normal bananas were for sale at the moment for the same price. ''Providing the product looks good, they [the public] won't not buy them. It's the quality of the produce you're selling them.''
Oxfam sent an email out to its supporters last week and said if sales did not increase soon, the supermarkets that stock fair trade bananas would stop selling them.
Oxfam fair trade co-ordinator Linda Broom said fair trade bananas had been on sale in New Zealand since February.

''It's still in its trial phase.

It's a huge deal that fair trade bananas are here [in New Zealand], it's a real step forward,'' she said.

Mrs Broom said there were still many supermarkets that did not stock fair trade bananas. ''It's all to do with raising public awareness.''
She said the public needed to campaign for fair trade bananas to push supermarkets into selling them.

All Good imports fair trade bananas from El Guabo, Ecuador, each week. All Good founder Simon Coley said there had been great support for products like fair trade coffee but selling fair trade bananas had been very different. ''We are confident that over time people will understand the difference between fair trade and normal. We had hoped for that to happen a little quicker,'' he said.

Both Shoprite and New World Masterton said they did not stock fair trade bananas.

Woolworths Masterton could not comment.

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