INTRODUCTION Food producers are improving promotion strategies to boost market share
GREECE Brand awareness is key to future success

Increasingly, Greek agricultural produce is finding its way on to our supermarket shelves. Some products are already familiar in the UK, such as feta cheese, olives, dolmades (stuffed vine leaves), houmous, taramasalata, tzaziki (a cucumber yoghurt with garlic), some fruit, honey, sweets such as baklava and, perhaps most important of all, olive oil.
Many olive oil aficionados declare that the Greek variety is superior to any other, yet it still has some way to go before it gains a greater share of the British market.
While Italian olive oil has gained a huge reputation in Britain, readers might be surprised to learn that the Italians are themselves importers of Greek olive oil. Greece, the world’s largest producer of the much sought after extra virgin olive oil, sells thousands of tonnes of it a year to Italy. In 1999, for example, Italy imported 197,000 tonnes of Greek olive oil, mostly virgin.

Of the Greek crop, nearly 75 per cent yields olive oil that can be classified as extra virgin, compared with 50 per cent of Italy’s and 30 per cent of Spain’s. On average, the annual per capita consumption rate in Greece is 20 litres – by far the world’s highest. The figures for Italy and Spain are 11 and nine litres respectively.
The Greeks, for so long distanced at the eastern end of the Mediterranean – the country still has no common border with any other EU member – are wising up to the demands of western European consumers.

A new generation of market-savvy Greek producers is making top quality olive oil.
Branding is vital for companies to obtain a bigger market share for Greek olive oil, yet only around 10,000 tonnes of it is exported each year in bottles. Exports to the UK in 1999 totalled just 2,000 tonnes.
Extra virgin olive oil is derived from the first cold-pressing of olives, without refining, and it is characterised by an acidity level of less than one per cent.

Connoisseurs already know to look out for Greek brands of extra virgin olive oil such as Spitko, Extrolio, the organic extra virgin from Kolymbari sold under the Gold Crete label, and the strong, peppery and rather costly Agourelio. In the British market, the Iliada and Karyatis labels – extra virgin oils from Kalamata – are gaining ground.
In Greece, one of the top brand names for olive oil, as well as the leading brand for packaged products such as olive pate and stuffed olives, is Xenia. Only extra virgin olive oil is produced by the Olympia-Xenia company at a modern factory in the Olympia region of southern Greece.

‘Our first steps towards the British market’ Gerry Vassilopoulous

Company director Gerry Vassilopoulous says about a third of his products are export-ed to Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. “At the moment, our products are not available in the UK, but we are making our first steps towards entering the British market by getting samples of our products into small supermarkets,” he says.

‘Dairy quality has improved tremendously’ Dimitri Daskalopoulous

“Our aim is to export two-thirds of our products and sell the rest in the domestic market. We are still in the process of achieving this aim. We have an exclusive distributor in the UK and we export our products to most European countries.”
Greece has a small market of only 12 million people, so the only way for local producers to expand is to export and the Balkan region is a prime target.
Dimitri Daskalopoulous, director of Greek food manufacturer Delta Holdings, says: “For small countries like Greece, the only way to grow is to expand into neighbouring areas. We have done that, taking great risks as soon as countries opened up to trade. We went there with a long-term view, as investors not traders, and that has made us the leader in five countries.”

Delta began 50 years ago as a producer of milk and yoghurt, which was sold in a small shop in Athens. Today, it is listed on the Athens Stock Exchange and is one of the largest food manufacturing groups in Greece, employing more than 4,000 staff.
The group has nine factories in Greece, one in Serbia, one in Romania and one in Bulgaria. Overall, it maintains operations in eight countries in southeastern Europe through 85,000 outlets.
Delta produces more than 160 different products, and in Greece it is the top fresh milk distributor and ice-cream maker, as well as the leader in the cheese and butter market. In the past 15 years, the standards in Greek agro-processing have changed out of all recognition.

“We collect the same amount of milk now as we did 15 years ago, but from fewer than 2,000 farmers instead of 14,000,” says Mr Daskalopoulos. “There has been a massive improvement in the quality of dairy produce.
“I need to stress this because Greece, along with a few other countries, was always being blamed for not being totally up to European standard. In Greece we still have a few things to do in order to be 100 per cent perfect, but we are very close to that target.”

Greek agriculture minister George Drys calls for greater levels of investment in the sector. The current sources of funds are the government, EU funding ($282 million until 2006), and private enterprise. The minister says a new law, which came into effect last year, is designed to modernise the sector and improve agricultural practice. Greater emphasis is being given to organic farming to meet consumer demand.
“A significant amount of funding for farming in the EU support framework will go to water resource management,” says Mr Drys.
“The aim is to raise production capacity for a variety of crops in the more arid regions of Greece. It is one of the most important provisions we can make for farming.”