São Paulo – Businessman Rafael Gonçalvez is the first Brazilian CEO of the United Arab Emirates-based Al Foah, the world’s largest date company. The executive holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of São Paulo (USP) and was offered the position following a successful career in multinational companies and large firms in the UAE.
Working in different industries, from the financial sector to large food and beverage companies, Gonçalves says that embracing new things has never been a problem for him. In fact, although he was born in a country where dates are not popular, he now runs a company that has taken the fruit all over the world and tried to increase their consumption among Brazilians.
Born in São Paulo, Gonçalves moved with his family to Campinas when he was four. Upon graduating from USP in 1998, he earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, United States. In an interview with ANBA, Gonçalvez talked about his first career choice in the financial market. He knew this was a career in high demand.
Gonçalvez worked at the Chase Bank in the private equity department and at JP Morgan in the US. Then he worked in consulting but ended up getting back to private equity. He was also in fusions and acquisitions at Lehman Brothers for Latin America, and after the crisis of 2008, he realized he wanted to lead people. “In consulting and the financial market, you aren’t necessarily a leader. You thrive with technical knowledge, transactional capabilities, and customer service skills,” he said.
Then he went to beverage giant Inbev to work with fusions and acquisitions, where he helped designing a strategy for the future. In 2011, Gonçalvez started working at Labatt, an Inbev subsidiary in Canada, where he played a leadership role. Still at Inbev, in 2014, he moved to Belgium in the administrative and operational department. “I was in charge of the company’s global transformation, with the establishment of offices and standardized frameworks and processes, as well as other strategies,” he said.
UAE
Around four years ago, he started his professional story with the Arabs. The opportunity came from a private investment office owned by Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Emaar, the company responsible for building Burj Khalifa and dozens of other buildings. Gonçalves moved to Dubai with his wife and two daughters to be the office’s portfolio director, and he was tasked with establishing a private equity fund for Alabbar, managing a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of assets in different sectors like e-commerce, logistics, food and beverages, and technology.
When the creation of the fund was cancelled after one year, Gonçalvez went to work for a company of the Alabbar group, Americana Foods. “It was a fantastic opportunity. Alabbar has a portfolio that includes Emaar, Americana, Noon (e-commerce), Aramex (logistics). It was quite promising,” he said.
But COVID-19 arrived, and since March 2020 the UAE-based firms had to adapt. “I received a call from a headhunter of a holding from Abu Dhabi. He needed someone to work at Al Foah, with their portfolio,” he said.
In the world of dates
The businessman then started as a leader in the transformation of the company as its CTO and is now completing his second year as the CEO of the world’s largest date producer, driving an exponential growth of the company and supplying to different countries, including Brazil. “I’d never worked with dates before, just like I’d never worked with food and beverages before Inbev. Embracing new things is no problem for me,” he said.
In 2020 Gonçalves was already seen a very promising growth potential in sales of dates to new markets, as the fruit has a very well-established demand among groups that are its biggest consumers. “Dates are mostly consumed by Muslims, particularly in Ramadan. In other parts of the world, it isn’t a very well-known fruit, but it’s a fantastic product, as it’s a very healthy food with a low glycemic index and plenty of fiber,” he said.
The fruit, which is a symbol of the Arab countries, is sold whole, pitted and as an ingredient in the form of date honey or date syrup, and the company is now launching a date powder for the next year. These products can replace sugar in recipes, Gonçalvez says, and this healthy food market has grown.
There are approximately 300 types of dates in the Arabian Peninsula, and the UAE alone is home to 15 types. Al Foah’s best-sellers are Medjool and Deglet Nour. The company produces 120,000 to 130,000 tonnes of dates a year, and it continues to grow, Gonçalvez says. Besides dates from the UAE, the company also buys dates from other countries to sell, like Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Iraq. The company now exports to 48 countries, and approximately 90% of its output is shipped overseas.
The firm was created in 2005 as a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Holding (ADQ), owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, and was aimed at making the sector need less subsidies. “Even before I arrived, Al Foah had a long history of success. The company now has to prepare to get more modern and help the government rationalize subsidies,” the businessman said. Gonçalves has worked in the transformation aimed at raising the market value of dates, breaking into new markets and creating demand in non-traditional markets like Europe, the US, and Brazil.
After two years working at the company, he said it was not easy at the beginning, as the pandemic led the date industry go through some difficult times. “Saudi Arabia is one of the largest consumers, and since there was no pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) that year, a large part of consumption didn’t happen, and farmers had to sell at just any price, and the date value dipped dramatically. Since then, we’ve been trying to get date prices back up,” Gonçalvez said.
Dates in Brazil
The businessman expects Brazil to be a growing success case, as there is no local production. However, he said that high import taxes limit the growth potential in the country. Dates from the UAE compete with the product from Israel, for example, which is sold without taxes due to their free trade agreement with Mercosur.
Al Foah started selling its Date Crown dates at the Carrefour supermarket chain in Brazil. “We are moving now to our fourth container to Carrefour and expanding to other brands of the group and other retailers, too. Last year the average was one container a year to Brazil, and this year will see at last ten containers, so we grew tenfold. But it is still little compared to some of the leading markets,” he said. According to him, Bangladesh, for example, buys approximately ten containers – or 200 tonnes — of dates per day and is one of the leading markets together with Morocco, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and others.
Gonçalves, who has now lived outside Brazil for 20 years, said he likes living in Dubai with his family. “I had no idea that I’d live in Dubai one day, but we came to spend our vacation here back in 2016, and we really liked it here, and our expat friends spoke very highly of the country, which helped us make the decision,” he recalled.
He was emphatic about his future plans: “I’ve learned that you plan, and God laughs at your face, but everywhere I go my primary goal is always learning a lot and leaving a positive experience so that the company is better off than when I came in,” he concluded.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
