São Paulo – The commercial director of Arab company Organic Foods and Café, Gerwin Friedrichs, is in São Paulo to increase imports of organic products from Brazil. The company owns the largest organic supermarket chain in the world and is going to participate, for two days, in meetings with Brazilian producers interested in selling to the Middle East.
Organic Foods and Café is from Dubai and the meetings should be promoted during the seventh edition of Biofach Latin America, which began yesterday (28th) and ends on October 30th, at Expo Transamerica, in the city of São Paulo. Together with the Biofach, the ExpoSustentat is also taking place, where visitors have access to talks about the organics sector.
Organic Foods and Café is the only distributor of organic products in the United Arab Emirates. Established in 2004, as part of the Al Accag Group, the company has two shops of its own, including the largest supermarket of organic products in the world, covering an area 27,000 square metres.
The products traded include items for bakeries, fruit and vegetables, oil products, body products, supplies, nutritional foods, coffee and seafood. Among the products that the company already buys from Brazil are meats, honey and cleaning products.
Friedrichs informs that the objective of Organic Foods and Café, which is participating in the fair in Brazil for the first time, is to diversify the products imported from the country. "We want to buy chicken, eggs, more cleaning products, new supplies and juice,” he pointed out.
Apart from own shops, the company also distributes products to other countries in the Gulf, like Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and has food services in hotels in Dubai.
According to Friedrichs, Organic Foods and Café does not yet have plans to open shops in Brazil, but the country’s products have great acceptance in the Arab market. “Brazilian meat is very well known worldwide, and then comes honey and also fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables. After the fair, the company hopes to increase its purchases from Brazil by between US$ 2 million and US$ 3 million a year.”
In total, he should participate in 26 meetings with Brazilian companies. These meetings are part of the Organics Brazil Buyer Project, which, throughout the fair, should promote business roundtables between six international buyers and 48 companies from Brazil. Organics Brazil is a sector export program, developed by the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil), the Institute for Promotion of Development (IPD) and the Federation of Industries of the State of Paraná (Fiep).
Exports
According to the Apex Projects manager, Eduardo Caldas, the main markets that buy organic products from Brazil are Germany, Spain and France. However, the agency is working to expand the number of importers, which includes the Arab countries.
“The Emirates have been showing themselves to be a very dynamic market. We analyse characteristics like market opening and buying power and the Emirates are receptive to these products.” Caldas also mentions Saudi Arabia as another potential market for Brazilian organics.
Organics from Brazil
The Ministry of Agriculture does not yet know the exact dimensions of the organic product market in Brazil. According to Rogério Dias, the Agro Ecology coordinator at the Ministry, the best measurements for the national organic product market is the growing number of sector fairs throughout Brazil and the higher sales at supermarket chains.
At shops of the Pão de Açúcar Group, for example, the sale of organic products rose by 40% this year when compared to 2008. Expectations by the chain are to exceed 50 million Brazilian reals (US$ 28.7 million) in revenues with sector products up to late 2009.
He also stated that, different from what may be imagined, the organic product market is not turned exclusively to the middle and upper classes. “The recently disclosed [Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics] IBGE census on organic production shows a picture of very different producers from what would be imagined. We have a great concentration of producers in the Northeast who sell their products at fairs and provide door to door delivery.”
Dias said that the federal government is also a buyer of these products, through the Program for Acquisition of Food, PAA. “It pays 30% more for organic products and places them in the baskets that are distributed by social programs.”
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is also investing in the organic product sector in Brazil. In partnership with the Organics Net, which supports 26 organic producers all over the country, the bank participates to help increase revenues of these associates. Since 2008, the IDB, the National Agriculture Society, the government of Canada and the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) have invested around US$ 380,000 in small and medium organic producers.
*Translated by Mark Ament
