São Paulo – Brazil’s preserve company Dom Villê Conservas is about to start selling Egyptian olives on the domestic market. The São Paulo-based enterprise joined B2B sessions with exporters from Egypt last week (pictured above), at the offices of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, in São Paulo, and purchased two containers’ worth of olive preserve from two Egyptian companies.
Dom Villê imports olives, dried fruit and mushrooms to sell locally in Brazil. The Dom Villê-branded product gets shipped out to distributors which supply restaurants and hotels in Brazil, in vessels ranging from one to 150 kg.
Dom Villê partner Gregório Hadje Kartalian (left in the picture) explains that the company buys product from Argentina, Peru and Chile, as well as mushroom preserve from China, and price was one of the reasons Kartalian chose to buy olive preserve from Egypt.
According to Kartalian, Egyptian olives are currently better priced than Argentinian ones, even though the latter is tax-exempt in Brazil, since both countries are Mercosur members.
Late last year, the Mercosur-Egypt free trade agreement went into effect, giving Egyptian olives a 25% import tax discount in Brazil. “The tax went from 14% to 10.5%,” says Kartalian.
He said he made the purchase in order to see how Egyptians perform, deadline- and weight-wise, after which he will decide whether to go on buying or not. If everything works out, Dom Villê plans to import 30 containers’ worth of olives from Egypt per year at first – the company is also open to looking at product from other Arab countries.
“In my niche, imports from Egypt tend to increase a lot,” Kartalian told ANBA, in discussing the consequences of the tax breaks stemming from the Mercosur agreement. He expects the first batch of olives to arrive in Brazil next June.
Dom Villê
Dom Villê has been on the market for ten years now, and it sells most of its product in Brazil’s Southeast and North regions. Its headquarters – offices and industry facilities – is located Rio Pequeno, a neighborhood in West Side São Paulo.
It sells a range of olive preserves, including pitted, sliced and stuffed green and black olives. The purchase from Egypt comprised sliced green and pitted green olives. This was the first time Dom Villê ever bought direct from an Arab company. It had purchased Arab-made items in the past via a broker.
Arab Chamber
The B2B sessions Kartalian attended were held by the Arab Chamber and by Egypt’s Food Export Council (FEC) on Thursday (10), as part of the Brazil-Egypt Business Meeting, which also featured lectures on Brazil-Egypt relations and the export potential of the latter country.
The Egyptian companies were also exhibitors at the APAS Show, a supermarket industry show which ran from May 7 to 10 in São Paulo. They showcased their goods in a pavilion organized by the Arab Chamber.
Quick facts
Dom Villê Conservas
Phone: +55 (11) 2533 4787
Email: gkartalian@uol.com.br
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
