Fresh produce group Fyffes has signed a strategic alliance with Uniban, the main banana and plantain export company in Colombia, to help the Irish group move into the US market.

Uniban is currently Fyffes's largest supplier, providing the company with as many as 13 million cases of bananas a year. Overall it exports about 23 million cases a year from Colombia.

"This alliance is a way of getting into the US market and having a good go at it," a spokesman for Fyffes said.

"It's a huge market and they feel they have a good long-standing relationship with Uniban to build upon."

This is not Fyffes's first foray into the US market. In 1996, the group withdrew from banana distribution in the US after just two and a half years as it struggled to make a profit from the venture.

At that time, the US operation accounted for about 3 per cent of Fyffes's annual sales.

This time round Fyffes is understood to be investing about $6 million (€5 million) in the project, which it hopes will be more successful.

The venture will take the form of a 50/50 ownership of Turbana, Uniban's marketing subsidiary in the US.

Turbana, which is based in Florida, has been in business in the US and Canada since 1970, selling and marketing bananas and plantains.

Over the past two years it has started selling pineapples, an area the new venture intends to focus on.

Turbana currently markets more than 10 million cases of bananas and plantains in the US, with annual sales of almost $100 million. Each case holds about 100 bananas.

Fyffes, which is among the five largest fresh produce distributors in the world, employs about 3,000 people in more than 10 countries in over 75 locations.