São Paulo – Ervateira São Mateus, based in the city of São Mateus do Sul, in the state of Paraná, exports yerba mate to two Arab countries, Syria and Lebanon. According to one of the company’s partners, Ignacio Carrau, the company sells sporadically to the Syrian market and on a regular basis to the Lebanese market. The enterprise first started exporting to the Arabs approximately two years ago, and yerba mate is used in the two countries for making mate to drink (chimarrão), a habit they inherited from the Argentineans.
“The market is expanding,” says Carrau regarding sales to the Arab world. According to the businessman, Ervateira São Mateus does promotion on websites, participates in business fairs and events abroad, and these have led the company to its Arab clients. He says his buyer in Lebanon is a great partner, but notes that Arabs buy mostly from Argentina. The Argentinean habit of drinking mate was adopted in the region after Arab immigrants lived in the South American country for some time, and then returned to their native region. Some learned the habit in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, after a similar migratory flow.
According to Carrau, Ervateira São Mateus is able to compete with Argentina price-wise, and its product boasts higher quality than the one supplied by the neighbouring Argentina. The Paraná state-based company is completely export-oriented, and sells to over ten countries, including Germany, Japan, United States, Spain, Canada, Argentina and Uruguay, in addition to Lebanon and Syria. In some of the target countries, the yerba mate is used for making chimarrão. In others, it is used as an ingredient for manufacturing beverages, medicines, phytotherapics, and even cosmetics.
Carrau was born in Uruguay and moved to Brazil to work in yerba mate manufacturing. Early on, the company worked in partnership with another company, and shipped product only to Uruguay. Activities were restructured approximately four years ago, after the company was split among family members. The sole owners following the restructuring are the brothers Frederico Carrau and Ignácio Carrau. From then on, exports started increasing.
Ervateira São Mateus owns a manufacturing unit in São Mateus, which handles all of the yerba mate manufacturing process. The raw material is the leaf of a tree called Ilex paraguariensis. The leaf is supplied by 300-plus growers who work under the company’s supervision. The company’s annual output ranges from 3 to 4 million kilograms.
Ervateira sells the product both in bulk and packaged in small amounts, bearing the customer’s label, for retail sales. Product types also vary. The Syrians and Lebanese, for instance, buy the yerba mate containing lots of straws and little dust. Other markets, on the other hand, favour a yerba with more dust. According to Carrau, the company worked for about a year to adapt the product so it would suit the taste of the Arabs.
Ervateira São Mateus
Telephone: +55 (42) 3532 1306
Website: www.ervateirasaomateus.com.br
Email: ervateira@ervateirasm.com.br
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
