São Paulo – During its second participation at the APAS Show in São Paulo, Iraqi snack and pasta manufacturer Great Food plans on cementing its sales to Brazil and broaden their presence by opening a plant. From this eventual plant, the company will take a further step: export from Brazil. APAS Show is the leading grocery retail exhibition in Brazil and is being held in the Expo Center Norte through Thursday (16). Great Food exhibits at the trade show’s Arab Area, a stand featuring Arab companies organized by the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC).
“We came to APAS for the first last year, to learn about the trade show, Brazil, the local market, and to network. Now we’re bringing in five containers to sell in markets in Curitiba, Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro. We want a plant in Brazil, so that the country can become our export hub to South, Central and North America,” said Great Food CEO Abdulhadi Al Maaliki, who is partner of Iraq’s Tayseer Sammak. His distributor in Brazil is Gabriel Chamelian, CEO of Santa Marina Alimentos, a company that is also a cookie manufacturer. According Chamelian, five containers are arriving in Brazil soon bringing more snacks by Great Food.
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A brand of the company is Mister Furtuk, the latter word being Arabic for peanut. It is a high-protein, roasted snack made of corn, peanut butter, milk and chocolate. “We make a product that is unique in the international market, not only here. And we know how Brazilian consumers enjoy candies. [Selling candy products] will be our path in Brazil,” he said.
Pasta from Iraq to premium market in Brazil
Another product that the company is showcasing at APAS is its Mazarieuna pasta. Maaliki says theirs are superior in quality to Brazil’s and even Italy’s pastas that land here.
“Mine is a premium product. Our strategy is to tap into a niche market and sell to consumers seeking premium products for competitive prices,” he says. He explains that their made-in-Iraq pasta is stands out for their percentage of semolina, a nobler ingredient compared to wheat that adds value to the product. The two leading global suppliers of semolina, says Maaliki, are Ukraine and Russia, the latter being their current supplier.
The parent company is over one hundred years old. It was first established in Damascus, Syria. In 2015, Maaliki and a partner in Iraq founded Great Food in Erbil, some 390 kilometers north from capital Bagdad. “After going to Iraq, we exported to its neighboring countries, then to Europe. Latin America has been on our radar as we know that what we make doesn’t exist here,” he says. “We learned that Brazil is the gateway for South America,” he says on the company’s plans to settle in Brazil.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
