São Paulo – Brazil may be the next destination for Egyptian household appliance maker Universal Group. The international marketing manager at the company, Hesham Ayad, will be in São Paulo up to next Friday (17), seeking local partners to produce his products. Ayad’s proposal is for a Brazilian appliance company to sell Universal products in the country. In exchange, he is offering the opportunity of producing and trading Brazilian products made by the Brazilian partner in Egypt.
"We plan to find a Brazilian partner with which to establish a joint venture. I believe that this is the best way of entering the country. Our products have good pricing in the Arab markets, where we are leaders, but if we exported to Brazil, taxes and freight would make them more expensive and we would not be able to compete with companies that are already here and can practice a relatively low price,” said Ayad, on visiting the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday (15).
Universal produces cookers, ovens, washing machines, water heaters, oil central heating, fridges and vacuum cleaners. According to Ayad, the company’s proposal is to sell washing machines and cookers in Brazil. Latin America is the continent in which Universal has the greatest operations. It has already exported to Argentina, four years ago, and now wants to enter the Brazilian market.
The company sells to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The group has eight factories, 700 employees in Egypt and annual revenues of 1 billion Egyptian pounds, equivalent to US$ 164.4 million. "Brazil has a population of 200 million people and a growing market. It is the main country in Latin America and we must be in it,” he said. Ayad stated that he met with executives of household appliance maker Atlas and said that talks were productive.
According to the executive, another option to sell the Universal products in Brazil, in case no local partner is found, would be exporting high-end products from Egypt to Brazil, which are more expensive. Thus, it would be possible to obtain profit even with taxes and freight.
*Translated by Mark Ament
