Having returned from the London Fairtrade Festival last week, its back to figuring out how to build up Fairtrade distribution in Ireland. Currently one distributor has a collection of wonderful fairtrade brands, but the products are not getting into the multiples or the BWG/Musgraves type foodservice acccounts. Strange, as the products all sell well in their type of outlets elsewhere.
Wish4 has made good progress in UK colleges and universities, but in Ireland, getting to these outlets is a very fragmented process; There is no central student buying groups to help the process. And there are more catering contractors per head of population than is necessary for a market this size.
Having helped launch Tipperary as a Fairtrade Town last week, and seen the demand and interest on the ground, we continue to hope that more of the powerful buying people in Musgraves, BWG, Aramark, Compass, Kylemore etc will be encouraged to look again at where their products are coming from, and who is being exploited in the process. In most cases the answer is 'we dont know' ! And I for one wonder if its a case of 'we dont care' ?
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