São Paulo – Seven dairy industry companies affiliated with the B Dairy project have convened this Wednesday (1st) at the offices of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce to outline upcoming export promotion actions for the industry. B Dairy is a partnership between the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB) and the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) to internationalize the industry.
The actions being considered include attending the Gulfood exhibition, due from February 8th to 12th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Prod Expo, in Russia, and hosting virtual matchmaking events with Arab importers.
Gulfood, the Middle East’s premier food exhibition, has been the leading showcase for dairy in the region, but the Arab market requires other forms of commercial promotion, as explained by Bernhard Smid, the international promotion and prospecting manager for OCB.
“We reckon that the Arab market requires careful work. We plan on paying visits to specific countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Everything must be done systematically. Our intention is to do non-stop work in the region,” he says. In a bid to reinforce its actions in the region, the OCB has also become a member of the Arab Chamber to work in tandem for the benefit if the B Dairy companies.
The B Dairy project involves ten Brazilian dairy manufacturing companies. At this time, six of these companies already sell their products to foreign countries. Their leading buyer is Venezuela, whose dairy imports from the companies affiliated with the project amounted to a combined US$ 8.84 million from January through August this year. The other leading importers of B Dairy companies’ products are all Arab countries.
From January to August 2014, the B Dairy brands sold a combined US$ 6.39 million to Egypt, US$ 1.70 million to Saudi Arabia, US$ 1.72 million to Tunisia and US$ 1.15 million to Bahrain.
According to Smid, the B Dairy companies already know how to go about doing business in Arab countries, and the project’s purpose is to support their work. “The project does what companies can’t, i.e. it jointly promotes the Brazilian market as a whole and shows its strength,” he says. According to the executive, powdered milk and butter are the main products shipped by B Dairy project companies to Arab countries.
Year-to-date through August, the project’s companies have shipped US$ 24.6 million worth of dairy products abroad. The sum already exceeds their exports in all of 2013, which amounted to US$ 17.9 million. The number of importing countries has also increased year-on-year. Last year, the project’s brands shipped product to 19 countries, as against 26 so far this year.
Condensed milk
Mococa, a São Paulo-based dairy manufacturing company, began selling to Arab countries roughly four years ago. Currently, it ships condensed milk directly to Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.
“To Tunisia, we supply a private brand, Vanoise, which is very popular there. We also have a distributor for the Mococa brand, which has carried out a few promotional actions at points of sale, and we are growing gradually. To Saudi Arabia, we supply the Velor Goody brand and the importer also supplies Jordan,” says the Sales executive Fernanda Castro. Vanoise is supplied as a private label: Mococa manufactures the product under the brand’s label.
According to Castro, approximately 10% of Mococa’s output is shipped abroad. Monthly output for condensed milk alone is 10,000 tonnes. Mococa also exports cream and chocolate milk. The products are sold to markets such as Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Angola and Aruba, among others.
According to the executive, condense milk is very popular in Arab countries. “They consume lots of it mixed with coffee and tea,” she says. One-kilogram cans of the product sell a lot in Tunisia. After Venezuela, Arab countries are the company’s leading targets. Mococa has confirmed its attendance at the upcoming edition of Gulfood.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
