São Paulo –Steviafarma Industrial S.A., a Brazilian company that makes natural sweeter out of the stevia plant, started exporting to the Middle East last year. According to the director general at the company, Airton Goto, the organisation has distribution throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the economic bloc that includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and also in Egypt, in North Africa.
Steviafarma does not disclose production and export figures, but, according to Goto, it has been selling abroad for over ten years. Markets abroad include the United States, the oldest, and countries in Latin America and Europe, as well as the Arabs. According to the director general, the company has been investing in exports. “It is a product that has demand,” he said.
The European Union, for example, recently approved the trade of stevia sweetener in its countries, which put the product into evidence in other parts of the world. According to Goto, the fact that Steviafarma is a company with a long life in the field – it has been in the market since 1988 – attracts importers. It was due to the company’s longevity that several export contracts, including some in the Arab world, were made.
Abroad, Steviafarma faces competition with the Chinese. “But they do not produce at the same quality as we do,” said Goto. Steviafarma produces the product both in liquid and in powdered form, and sells both varieties abroad. In the Middle East, the greatest demand is for the powdered product. The labels of products shipped to the region are in Arabic and English, explained the director general. According to him, the company does not have a main market and exports are currently greatly pulverized in terms of destinations.
Steviafarma sells the liquid sweetener in two kinds of packages – 40 millilitres and 100 millilitres, and the powder in pouches and in a larger container, for use in cooking. All produce leaves the company’s industrial unit, in a 26,000 square unit in Maringá, in the interior of Paraná. The company’s staff totals 50 people and the stevia used is cultivated in an area owned by the organisation.
The organisation was established by a group of businessmen who decided to buy the patent for production of the stevia sweetener from the State University of Maringá. The organisation, led by biochemist Mauro Alvarez, developed research in the area, related to product safety and technologies that allowed for commercial exploration of steviol glycosides, the sweetener extracted from stevia.
The stevia sweetener is the only natural one on the market, as the others are synthetic. In the case of Stevita, the Steviafarma brand, the product does not include artificial components, like sucralose, saccharin, cyclamate and aspartame, among others. Stevia is a plant originally from the border between Brazil and Paraguay and was used by Indians in the region to sweeten medical concoctions.
Contact
Steviafarma Industrial S.A
Site: www.stevita.com.br
Telephone: (+55 44) 2101-4335
*Translated by Mark Ament
