|
 Josapar group, the leading packer and distributor of rice in Latin America, which is based in the Brazilian southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, is increasing sales of rice to the Arab market. The group started selling to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Algeria.
They were already exported rice brand Tio Joćo to Lebanon and Palestine since 2004, and the company is now negotiating with an importer from Jordan.
"Those are countries with very high consumption rates, and in which the quality of Brazilian rice is becoming known. In spite of proximity to Thailand and Vietnam, many sales opportunities arise," says Luciano Targa Ferreira, a sales and export director with Josapar.
"We intend to develop the Arab market further. Consumers are aware of opportunities to buy a differentiated product. We participated in a trade show in Dubai (Gulfood) in February, and the receptiveness was great," he stated.
"Presently, Brazil is the leading rice producing and consuming country in the Western world, and Josapar is proud of contributing to it," he adds. According to him, the variety of the Brazilian grain is a strong differential. Furthermore, the long thin rice, which is the variety that bears the most resemblance to the rice produced in other parts of the world, has more volume, looks better and is less sticky when cooked.
"Brazilian rice does not stick together after it is cooked. The aspect and color are also better, because our seeds are developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa)," explains the director.
Brazil was never a large rice exporting country. The country consumes 14 million tons per year and produces approximately 12.5 million tons, so it ends up importing around 1 million tons from neighboring Argentina and Uruguay. "Exporting rice from Brazil requires lots of market development," says Ferreira.
Last year, for example, the world was faced with a strong scarcity of rice that led prices to rocket. "It went from US$ 400 to US$ 1,000 from March to May, and that created space for Brazilian rice," he explains.
"Exporting is good because it regularizes the market and creates alternatives for selling. Constant exporting demands investment in the development of partnerships and differentiated packaging, so as to attract the attention of consumers, as well as very high quality in order to win the loyalty of clients," he asserts.
Founded in 1933 in the city of Pelotas, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the Josapar group has its flagship in rice brand Tio Joćo, which has been the market leader in Brazil for 30 years now. The Josapar group produces 35,000 tons of rice per month. Foreign sales account for 3% to 4% or production and go to more than 20 different countries. The largest markets are Angola, the United States, the Caribbean and Europe.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from Joćo Pessoa, the capital of Paraķba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MĮ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in Sćo Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in Sćo Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.