Alexandre Rocha*
São Paulo – To Alcafoods, a breakfast cereal factory from the midwestern Brazilian state of Goiás, the trade mission to Algeria, led by the Brazilian minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan, which took place in November, also opened business opportunities in other countries, and even in Brazil.
Among the Brazilian delegation itself, the Alcafoods representative discovered other companies, mostly trading companies, interested in selling their products in Asian countries, among them China, India and Japan. "I even met people interested in distributing our products on the domestic market," said the foreign trade manager at the company, Henrique Souto de Barros.
In Algeria, however, Barros is only awaiting opportunities in the medium term. During the mission, he met with representatives of five Algerian companies, three operating in the food sector, which showed interest in the cereal, as well as another two from the agricultural sector that intend to, in future, enter the industrialized food sector.
Despite the Algerian interest, Barros stated that in the country, consuming breakfast cereals is not a custom. "It is necessary to work on marketing of this kind of product," he said. Apart from that, according to him, some logistics problems need to be overcome so as to make the product more competitive on the Algerian market. "We hope to do business in the medium term," he declared.
The company has been exporting regularly for one year and recently created a foreign trade department. Before that, foreign business was only through trading companies. They have already sold to the United States, Suriname, Barbados and Australia and are developing the markets in Nigeria, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay and Turkey.
Production
Established in 1996, Alcafoods can produce 90 tonnes of breakfast cereal per day, among them sugar-free, sugared or chocolate coated corn flakes. "But we are also developing products out of oats and fibre," stated Barros.
Apart from the products sold under the Alcafoods brand, the company also supplies various supermarkets where the products are sold under their own brands. Among the clients are Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição, which belongs to the French group Casino, Carrefour, Sonae, Sendas, DIA%, which belongs to Spanish brand Promodes, Wal-Mart and Bom Preço, which also belongs to Wal-Mart.
Based in the city of Itumbiara, in the interior of Goiás, the company has revenues of approximately US$ 640,000 a month (in current figures) and employs 200 people.
*Translated by Mark Ament
