1.1.1 The advanced market
Few countries have participated at the inception of fair trade
fair trade system but alongside its development, more and more countries show
interest in joining the movement Up to 1995 few countries (14) have developed
or started to develop fair trade market. In 1998 the number of countries has
slightly risen to 18, and more recently, 25 countries have been counted as
expending the fair trade market. More than a quarter of these countries can be
classified as advanced according to their fair trade networks and the figures
of their sales. The advanced market group brings together the UK, France,
Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands. In this group the shape of the
market is not uniform; however the agricultural commodities represent a
substantial part of the sales.
In term of delivery channel, this group mostly proposes
products through supermarkets except in Germany where the sales are mostly
realized in worldshops. The greatest part of the sales are represented by
labeled products; and the food products still keep the highest percentage with
in the range of agricultural commodities. The common products are coffee,
banana, cocoa, chocolate, tea, fresh fruits, dried fruit, sugar, rice, and
fruit juice. Flower is also getting more important in the sales.
Besides the fact that those countries are among the first to
experiment the fair trade model, their leading position can be due to the
development of campaigning that achieve to raise the consumers awareness on
fair trade products. However, lately the market has been marked by a quite low
level of progress or sometimes declining trends in some products have been
observed (in Netherlands and France). The UK and Switzerland are the two
leading market of fair trade products in this first group. The table below
summarizes the sales of fair trade products for the developed market.
Table 1 Fair trade sales
in the advanced group 2005-2006
|
Country
|
2005 (in millions of Euro)
|
2006 (in millions of Euro)
|
Increase (%)
|
|
UK
|
276.8
|
409.5
|
48
|
|
France
|
109.1
|
160.0
|
47
|
|
Switzerland
|
133.8
|
135.3
|
1
|
|
Germany
|
70.9
|
110.0
|
55
|
|
Italy
|
28.0
|
34.5
|
23
|
|
Netherlands
|
36.5
|
41.0
|
12
|
Source: From FLO annual report 2006/07, and our sorting
1.1.2 The middle market
The middle market is the one that have already developed fair
trade market structures but that have a middle-of-the-road level of sales.
Countries in this group have a potential to develop their fair trade market
because of the number of their population, and the experience they can get from
other countries of the advanced group. In this group there are Austria,
Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Spain, and Sweden. The
sales of fair trade products go through mainstream supermarkets, worldshops
outlets and other specialized outlets. In the range of agricultural products,
labeled food products represent the greatest shares of the sales, and the list
of products is quite the same as in the first group except in the Czech
Republic where the were very few sales of food product. The following table
shows the trend of the fair trade sales in the European middle market.
Table 2: Fair
trade sales in the advanced group 2005-2006
|
Country
|
2005 (in millions of Euro)
|
2006 (in millions of Euro)
|
Increase (%)
|
|
Austria
|
25.6
|
41.7
|
63
|
|
Belgium
|
15.0
|
28.0
|
86
|
|
Czech Republic
|
NA
|
NA
|
NA
|
|
Denmark
|
14.0
|
21.5
|
54
|
|
Finland
|
13.0
|
22.5
|
73
|
|
Ireland
|
6.6
|
11.6
|
77
|
|
Spain
|
0.03
|
1.9
|
7.474
|
|
Sweden
|
9.3
|
16.0
|
73
|
Source: From FLO annual report 2006/07, and our sorting
| 
