Karsten Kunibert Krüger-Kopiske - Die deutsche Kühlschifffahrt - German Reefer Shipping

Shortly after the labelling of fruit became commonplace, the programme was introduced on the European continent and spread like wildfire. Sometime after January 1930, the use of the label was also introduced in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and France. From 1931 the name was also used in Bucharest (Romania) or Switzerland. Lorries, railway wagons, tram cars, airplanes — applying the banana label as an advertising medium to everything that moves or stands proved to be a great success.

Although there has been some speculation that bananas from the former German Cameroon (Cameroon) may have carried some kind of label even before World War I, this information seems to be incorrect, as the first German labels probably date from the 1930s (long after Germany lost its colonies in Africa), and the idea of labelling may have been copied by Fyffes.

These first German bananas were marketed by the Afrikanische Frucht Compagnie from Hamburg as “Deutsche Kamerun Bananen”. The German shipping company F. Laeisz operated a steamship service to Cameroon, which was then a German colony, at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911 F. Laeisz had imported around 350 banana plants from Central America and the Canary Islands to Cameroon and founded a banana company under the name “Afrikanische Frucht-Compagnie GmbH” (today still AFC).

In the meantime, fruit labelling had not become as widespread in the USA as in Europe. In the 1930s, the United Fruit Company made experiments with a brand known as “Meloripe”. However, little is known about this brand name and whether or not “Meloripe” labels were actually attached to the bananas.

In 1944, however, at the height of the Second World War, United Fruit introduced “Miss Chiquita”, personalized for marketing purposes by the singer and actress Carmen Miranda. This was the first serious attempt in the USA to sell a banana as a brand nationwide. The “Chiquita” brand name was introduced through radio jingles, advertisements in newspapers and of course in the cinema.

In the early years of labeling, United Fruit experimented with how to put the name and the Miss Chiquita logo on the bananas. Originally, a paper band was wrapped around the hands (of five fingers) of ripe bananas.

Similar to Fyffes, the Chiquita label had the same blue colour and the same oval shape and type of letters. The ribbons were wrapped around the ripe fruit in the USA. This all changed dramatically after the entire banana industry underwent massive changes in the early 1960s due to the widespread “Panama disease” in tropical production departments.

Panama Disease destroyed the Gros Michel variety, which was the only banana variety used worldwide. The new variety Cavendish, on the other hand, was resistant to Panama Disease, but damaged very quickly during handling. Instead of shipping whole bundles to the ports of destination and labelling the fruit after ripening, the bananas were now unloaded on the plantations and packed in cartons.

The box invented at that time by United Fruit, which is still known today as the UF21A box, also meant that the fruit had to be labelled on the plantation. The idea of using stickers was born in 1963, but because the machines used to apply the paper labels were too rough and could crush the fruit, the new stickers were applied to the fruit by hand.

Banana stickers now came in large rolls, and the stickers were applied to the green fruits at the end of the packaging line, just before the hands were packed into boxes. Soon other banana companies began to use stickers to identify their bananas.

This led to several lawsuits in late 1967 and early 1968 in which United Fruit Company sued Standard Fruit and Steamship Company (now known as Dole) in the Massachusetts District Court. United Fruit claimed that the labels used by Standard were too similar to its own labels. This case was one in a long series of lawsuits in the Eastern District Court of Louisiana.

The court ruled that the Standard label, although it appeared to be similar in shape and colour to the United label, did not infringe any trademark rights. The label in question was Standard’s brand name “Tropipac”. Standard, in turn, was forced to bring two counterclaims against United, alleging that United had attempted to monopolise the colour combinations suitable for banana labels by using different labels. It was even claimed that United had adopted a labelling programme copied from Standard and was trying to deceive “banana buyers” by making them believe that every banana with a label was produced by United.

The battle over colour codes and registered trademarks was in full swing, and soon after that, several banana companies registered their logos and brand names in Europe as well — in Germany, for example, AFC registered its brand name and logo “Uncle Tuca” as early as March 19, 1968, a trademark that is still in use today.

Today, major banana companies like Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte and Fyffes use several different brands. Chiquita uses names such as “Amigo” and “Consul” in addition to the Chiquita brand. This is not so much related to quality, but rather to fruit size or specific markets.

The development of the brand names themselves is also interesting. As mentioned above, the Dole of today was formerly known as “Standard Fruit”. Dole has used other brand names such as “Cabana” or “Cabanita” as brand names. Dole’s banana business dates back to the 19th century, when the “Standard Fruit & Steamship Company” of the Vaccaro brothers operated out of New Orleans, Louisiana and imported bananas mainly from Honduras. This company used brands such as “Cabana” and “Tropipac”, although the — then new — “Cabana” label was reserved for the disease-resistant Cavendish bananas in the early 1960s. Tropipac, on the other hand, continued to be used as a brand name in the 1960s in response to the declining deliveries of Gros Michel bananas. These Great Michel bananas tasted much better, but were not resistant to Panama disease.

After the Gros Michel bananas were no longer used, the Tropipac label became a second brand. When Castle & Cooke from Hawaii, then owners of the pineapple empire Dole, bought Standard Fruit in the 1970s, they decided to use the name Dole instead. The brand name Cabana became a secondary label, while Tropipac was deactivated. Today, “Bobby Banana” is another famous Dole label.

And while companies fought over the unique colours and shapes of the labels in the 1960s, banana labels became political in the 1980s. Some smaller labels were controversial, like the Russian bear Mischa. This label was never applied to a banana when the USA decided not to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

In Europe there are many labels for bananas from Caribbean and African countries (the so-called “ABC countries”), which had protection quotas against “dollar bananas” until 2006, when the EU banana quota system was abandoned and replaced by a tariff-only system. This “banana war” was part of a trade war that led the World Trade Organisation to support global “free trade”. As a result, however, some ABC brands have since disappeared.

As a result of the banana war, most of the banana stickers and labels used also began to indicate the country of origin of the bananas — so instead of using a single label that only contained the name of the banana company, each production department suddenly started using unique labels that indicated the origin of the fruit — be it the country name or an additional letter to indicate the different production departments within a country.

A more recent development in banana labelling is the so-called “fair trade” bananas with brand names such as Max Havelaar, Fairnando and Transfair, which represent European efforts to promote solidarity with smaller independent producers in many tropical countries.