Eleven Serbian food companies are currently preparing to travel to India to participate in the World Food fair. This will be a good opportunity to make business deals with the Indian counterparts and to boost the current export of the Serbian agricultural and food sector which stands at $3.2 billion.
Our companies have been participating in the major food fairs for years now including Prodexpo in Moscow, SIAL in France, Anuga in Cologne and BioFach in Nuremberg, in addition to the mentioned World Food in India.
“The Serbian Chamber of Commerce takes domicile food companies to some of the food fairs in collaboration with the Serbian Development Agency, while some visits we organize alone”, says Veljko Jovanovic, the head of the Organic Production Centre from the Chamber and adds: “This week, eleven Serbian food companies are travelling to India. At these fairs, we also represent companies that couldn’t come, talk to the fair participants, organize meetings, research market demand and help food companies to establish business contacts. For instance, we take our companies to the food fair in Rimini as visitors”.
The importance of participating in these fairs is best illustrated with the fact that our food companies made 27 million EUR worth of business deals at least year’s Prodexpo Fair in Moscow.
Maize occupies the no. 1 place on the list of the most exported Serbian agricultural products. Last year, Serbia exported 346-million-dollars worth of maize. Second product on the list is tobacco (277 million dollars) and third frozen raspberry (248 million dollars).
“We are quite competitive on the food market too. We export substantial quantities of apples to Russia. Then there is the export of berries (raspberries, blackberries and blueberries) which we export to very demanding markets like Japan, Great Britain and North European countries. However, maize remains our number one export product which also poses a problem because we need to work on exporting products that are in a higher processing stage and have bigger added value. In order to sell such products, our food companies need to invest a lot of money into marketing. For instance, our confectionary companies are very successful abroad, while our breweries are also becoming quite competitive”, Jovanovic adds.
(Vecernje Novosti, 02.11.2017)
http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/ekonomija/aktuelno.239.html:693759-Svet-voli-srpsku-hranu
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