São Paulo – Morocco wants to export olive oil to Brazil. A delegation made up of government authorities and business owners of the sector from the Arab country is in the city of São Paulo to promote the product and close deals with local importers. This Monday (16th) in the São Paulo state capital, they took part in a product presentation and tasting and in business matchmaking. The event had the support of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.
“The olive and olive oil sectors are cornerstones of our economy. There were significant investments made by the private sector, with the government’s support, to have an important exportable supply”, said Abdellah Janati, general manager of the Autonomous Authority for the Control and Coordination of Exports (EACCE, in the French acronym), an agency linked to Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Fisheries.
Currently, Morocco is the world’s sixth largest olive oil exporter, with Spain leading the rank. Brazil, however, doesn’t import the Moroccan product. “The goal in the next five years is to plant 1.2 million hectares [of olive trees]. Currently, we already went beyond 1 million hectares. In 2020, we will produce 2.5 million tons of olives, which will take us to be among the world’s five largest olive producers”, said Janati.
The executive pointed out that Brazil is a large consumer of olives and olive oil, a fact that awakened the interest of Moroccan producers and exporters. “The goal of these meetings is to create a partnership. This partnership could even generate investments in Morocco in the form of partnerships made with the private operators”, he said.
According to Janati, Morocco already exported 34,000 tons of olive oil this year, while its own domestic market already consumed from 150,000 to 200,000 tons of the product in the period. In the olives exports ranking, Morocco currently shows in third place worldwide, with sales of 70,000 tons per year.
In addition to this Monday’s event and the matchmaking that will continue throughout Tuesday (17th), Janati wants to promote new events to give continuity to the relationship between Moroccan producers and Brazilian importers. “After this tow-day event, we want to plan a visit by Brazilian importers to Morocco so they can get to know the sector, the producers and the plantations. We have a great mission in developing this trade relationships between these two countries”, he added.
Hicham Chraibi, vice-president of Interprolive, the association that gathers the olives and olive oil producers of Morocco, and general manager of the Olea Capital company, said that the organization “do everything it can for the Moroccan olive oil to the recognized as a quality product”. He pointed out that the Moroccan olive oil already won several quality awards in France, Italy, Spain, the United States and China.
“Brazil has a large potential for the consumption of olive oil and Brazil’s government shows a large interest for other countries to come in to close deals here, because we want to be able to buy quality products “, said Fábio Fernandes, a director at the Inspection of Plant Origin Products (Dipov) from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply. He mentioned that Mapa is the responsible agency to attest the quality of imported olive oil in Brazil. According to Fernandes, only when the private sector starts to import Moroccan olive oil is that the ministry will be able to prepare a report on the product.
“There’s a large potential for the olive oil in Brazil”, said Dipov’s director. According to him, the country imports from 50,000 to 60,000 tons of the product per year.
Rita Bassi, president of the Brazilian Association of Producers, Importers and Traders of Olive Oil (Oliva), the organization of the sector that has 16 members, mentioned that Portugal is the largest supplier of the product in Brazil, followed by Spain and Italy.
To her, Morocco needs to organize more relationship actions with local importers. “What is lacking is a good distributor in Brazil, to put together the producer out there with the distributor here in Brazil. This must be done through meetings and organization, showing the quality [of the product], she said.
Company
Faiza Tak-Tak, business director of Les Domaines Agricoles, from Morocco, said that her company has an area of 1,000 hectares with olive trees. “We have been producing high-quality olive oil for the local market for five years now and that’s what we want to export”, she said. Currently, the company producers approximately 200 tons of olive oil per year.
Hicham Meziane, manager of Business Development of Cartier, said that her company exports olives to 30 countries. “Brazil is a huge market to us. There’s an olives consumption tradition around here”, she said. “We really want to enter the market to prove that our product is better than those coming from Spain or Argentina. Morocco’s olives have a typical very strong state, and we want to make this know n in the Brazilian market”, he said.
Adnane Aouad, president of Zitoun Al Atlas, explained that his company produces only extra virgin olive oil. “We export the majority of our production to Europe, Canada and other countries. Brazil is an opportunity for us because it’s a new country for olive oil exports. We want to develop our exports in this part of the world, since Brazil is the main platform in South America”, he said. According to him, the company exports 90% of its olive oil production.
Thibault Deplanck, import manager of Carrefour, attended the event in search of new suppliers to the chain in Brazil. “We buy a lot of olive oil from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, which are the countries we have been buying from for years. Recently, we started to buy more olive oil from Chile and also Tunisia, which are countries that have very good olive oils with good cost-benefit ratio”, said the executive about the retailer’s main suppliers. Taking part in the tasting session, Deplanck approved the Moroccan product and now will assess the prices. “I tasted the olive oils from Morocco and they seemed very good to me. I want to know the cost-benefit ration also”, he added.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
