Randa Achmawi, special report for ANBA*
Cairo – Serra Comercial, a representative of lighting company Repume Iluminação, from the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo, signed yesterday, during Cairo International Fair, in Egypt, a US$ 200,000 contract to supply public lighting to Tanzania. The deal is for a 20-foot container containing 5,000 products. Repume is based in the city of Taboão da Serra, in greater São Paulo, the largest business centre in South America, and produces from lamp posts to projectors and industrial, decorative and public lighting fixtures. “In Tanzania the population has low buying power, but our company has products that may answer well to the demand with prices that are very convenient,” stated Serra Comercial director, Mary Benmayor, to the ANBA correspondent in Egypt. The purchase was by an engineer from Tanzania.
Serra Comercial is one of the Brazilian companies participating in Cairo International Fair since Tuesday. The company is one of those exhibiting at the space organized by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (CCAB) and the Brazilian Export Promotion Agency (Apex). Apart from the Egyptians, the company director also met visitors from Morocco, Palestine and Zambia at the Brazilian stand during the day yesterday. “They all showed interest, made many questions, and took price lists with them,” she stated.
Mary intends to suggest that the lighting fixture producer she represents open an assembly line in Egypt. Serra Comercial currently has an office in Los Angeles and exports Repume products to the United States and to Egypt. According to the Serra director, various Egyptian companies she made contact with are interested in establishing partnerships. “One of the candidates is an Egyptian designer. If the partnership is signed, the products will have the Made in Egypt mark and will be exported to many countries in the region, like, for example, Libya, where there is great demand for our products,” stated Mary, who, despite living in Brazil, was born in Egypt. “I wanted to come closer to this country because it is the place where I was born. To me this is a way of returning to my roots after almost 48 years,” she said.
The second day of the show was also marked by the first visit by the Brazilian ambassador, Elim Dutra, to the Brazilian stand. “This is the best presentation that Brazil has ever made at Cairo International Fair. This year the stand has doubled in size and all the company representatives I talked to are enthusiastic. Some of them have already done business and others are feeling that the environment is extremely favourable. For this reason I believe that we are starting with our right foot,” he said. According to the ambassador, the representatives of Brazilian companies are seeing that there are not only business possibilities with the Egyptians at this fair, but also with product distributors from other countries in the region.
Importers who visited the Brazilian stand were also very impressed. “We work with rice exports and got in contact with the representatives of Sanmak as we are interested in their machinery for rice processing,” stated Ehab Mostafa, a director at As-Sonbolah, an Egyptian company specialized in the processing and distribution of rice. Sanmak, from the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, is a producer of automatic rice grain selectors and is one of the Brazilian companies exhibiting at the event. “We consider Brazilian machinery comparable to the Japanese and Taiwanese when the matter is efficiency. And when considering costs, they are even more interesting,” stated Mostafa.
The Brazilian stand received around 150 visitors yesterday. The movement was positive, stated Michel Alaby, the secretary general of the CCAB. Apart from Sanmak and Serra Comercial, the Brazilian space also includes another nine companies and organizations, among them the Brazilian Beef Industry and Exporters Association (Abiec), the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association (Abef), Sansuy, a company in the plastics sector, and Madeireira Uliana, of wooden products. The fair will go on until March 25.
*Translated by Mark Ament
