São Paulo – Katz Spices, a company that specializes in spice exports, already sells these products to clients in Morocco and Egypt. The two countries combined account for 30% of sales for the company, which wants to conquer new clients in the Arab world.
“Spices are widely consumed among the Arabs,” says Regis Coelho, a partner of Katz. “When compared with our domestic market, they win by a landslide,” he says. The company began selling to the two North African countries in 2001, by means of contacts made in foreign trade shows. The company attends the fairs Sial, in France, and Anuga, in Germany. “When we went to Sial, we received a greater number of visitors who were from the Arab community,” says the businessman.
Katz has also exported to Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya and Mauritania. Now, Coelho believes that going to trade fairs may help expand the client base in Arab countries, and he reveals that he intends to participate in the Gulfood. “The fair in Dubai would be great opportunity for us to focus on the Arab market,” he says.
The main product exported by Katz to the Arabs is black pepper, but in the past it has already sold white pepper, pink peppercorn and Jamaican pepper as well. The clients are distributors that either resell to the processing industry or package the spices into glass containers to sell them. The product’s sales period ranges from July to February, the crop season. After that, importers turn to Vietnam, the leading black pepper producing country in the world.
Katz works with a total of 11 different types of spices: black pepper, white pepper, pink peppercorn, ground black pepper, ground white pepper, guaraná, cumaru, achiote and cayenne pepper. The company’s leading markets are European ones, such as France, Spain, Germany and Bulgaria. Katz also exports to countries in South, Central and North America, among them Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
Based in the city of Itú, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Katz works with ten suppliers of spices. In 2010, the company, which is medium-sized, exported 2,000 tonnes of spices.
Contact
Katz Spices
Telephone: +55 11 4023-7178/4023-7040
Site: www.katzspices.com.br
E-mail: regis_coelho@terra.com.br
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
