Fruit distributor Fyffes has gone on the Internet with worldoffruit.com, a new website.

The venture, which will cost £5 million (€6.35 million) to £10 million (€12.7 million), is developing an Internet portal for the fresh produce industry, including FruitXchange, a business-to-business (B2B) online trading system.

The plan is that FruitXchange will be used as the fresh fruit industry's site for traders to deal electronically in the market.

Dealing systems already exist on the web where traders can buy and sell commodities such as sugar, tea, coffee, livestock and metals.

Although initiated by Fyffes, and 100 per cent owned by the company, Fyffes will seek additional investor partners, from inside and outside the industry, to develop fully worldoffruit.com as the leading industry-wide portal. The site will combine B2B online trading with trade news, views and other services.

Mr David McCann, Fyffes chief executive, said: "We are delighted to be supporting worldoffruit.com in its development of the best Internet services for our industry.

"The Internet is changing the way business is done and worldoffruit.com will harness the benefits of e-commerce to offer tailored solutions to the fresh produce industry."

Mr Alan Holmes, managing director of worldoffruit.com, said "by early next year, we aim to have fresh produce traders from all over the world doing business online. We are working to enable full online transactions with invoicing, payments, links to transport providers, and other services as soon as possible".

Asked about projected revenue, he said initially the service would be free. But the firm expects to generate advertising revenue and in time to charge a fee. Noting that worldwide trade in fresh produce amounts to €250 billion, he said commission on even a small proportion of that would generate substantial revenue.