São Paulo – The Arab companies exhibiting at the fair of the São Paulo Supermarkets Association (Apas Fair) were, on the last day of the event, optimistic about the perspective of entering the Brazilian market. The exhibition started on Monday (2) and ended this Thursday (5) in the city of São Paulo. The pavilion that was organized by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce featured companies from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan.
Egy International Co., from Egypt, ended the fair with business well underway, according to its representative in Brazil, the foreign trade analyst Ragy Emam. According to him, there weren’t a lot of contacts made, but the ones that were done were very good. Among the products exhibited by the company in the fair, onions, garlic and potatoes attracted the most interest from Brazilians, followed by olive oils and olives. Canned goods came in third.
Egy is willing to invest in the Brazilian market. A new visit by representatives of the company should happen in the second half of the year and the contacts made at Apas will get their follow through. The company’s plans are to register itself and its products in Brazil. There’s even an idea of opening an office in the country for customer support. The prices of the Egyptian products are lower than those from Brazil, according to Emam, but the weight of taxes still needs assessing.
The Tunisian company Al Jazira, a producer of olive oil, and also an exhibitor at Apas, didn’t close any deals, but believes the fair is a good marketing tool for its products. “We’re gaining a better understanding of the Brazilian market,” said the regional exports manager of the company, Hassen Dimassi, to ANBA. He believes, however, that there is a great deal of work to be done with consumers, so that they know that Tunisian olive oil can compete with Portuguese and Spanish products.
Dimassi reports that the people who visited the stand and tasted his brand’s olive oil enjoyed it. Al Jazira makes a stronger-flavored variety of oil, from the North of the country, and a softer-taste kind from central Tunisia. The strong US dollar in Brazil, however, is making it harder for the product to get in, according to the manager.
Another Tunisian exhibitor, Boudjebel, a supplier of dates, also said its products were met with approval from visitors. Marketing manager Naim Boujbel claims that by attending, he was able to do prospecting and to get a better feel for the Brazilian market, its clients and the local date consumption habits.
Boudjebel has a distributor in Brazil and exports direct in the case of larger orders, but it is looking for more buyers. It sells to 33 countries and is Tunisia’s biggest dates exporter, according to Boujbel. It ships over 12,000 tons of dates abroad each year.
Wrapping up her activities at Apas’ Dubai stand, Dubai Exports export development manager Larissa Dores says demand for the products showcased was good. Her organization works to promote exports from Dubai. The highlights were date paste and sauce by Al Barakah Dates Factory LLC.
Dores claims four promising contacts were made with prospective importers of items by Al Barakah Dates, but that many more people, at least 50, stopped by to see Dubai’s stand. She believes the Apas Fair is a good outlet for offering goods from Dubai, and she is even considering having a bigger space in which to offer more items in the future.
Arab importers
And the Arab world was not present at the Apas Fair only to sell goods. Four importers from the region sat in with Brazilian companies in a matchmaking event held by the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil). The buyers were from Qatar, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.
According to Apex’s operations manager in Dubai, Karen Fernandes Jones, who accompanied the group, some of the Arab companies at the Apas Fair already import products from Brazil. They were looking for a wide variety of food products, according to Jones. She believes the contacts made at the fair should lead to deals being made in the future.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum
