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With the external market as the objective, the Brazilian Association of Toiletries, Perfumes & Cosmetics Industries (Abihpec) and the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae), created the Cosmetics Exports Group of the State of Minas Gerais, in the southeast of Brazil.
With little more than a year of existence, the group has just settled the plan for nine micro and small sized companies to be prepared to start exporting.
"We started work selecting the companies with export potential, which were interested in participating in a international trade promotion program in the whole state," explains the coordinator of the project at the Sebrae in Minas Gerais, Simone Mendes.
Amongst the chosen companies, six industries are based in the capital city of the state, Belo Horizonte, and three in the city of Uberlândia.
"We identified the capacitation stage of each company for meeting the demands of the internal and external markets," tells Simone.
According to her, the objective is to see the current reality of the group, to gather the companies according to their immediate needs, develop ways of business capacitation and promote trade.
According to the coordinator, after the indicators revealed the diagnostics, an action planning was carried out together with the businessmen. Product adaptation activities were defined and the main potential markets were identified. Amongst them are countries from the Middle East and North Africa.
"We have been for the second time to a fair in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and the results were very positive," states the Abihpec president, João Carlos Basílio.
According to him, the participation at the Beauty World Middle East in 2005 resulted in an increase of more than 100% in the business volume, in relation to the last year's edition. "We estimate exports of US$ 12 million to that region in a period of 12 months," bets Basílio.
The Abihpec president explains that, before anything else, the project aims at removing the micro and small sized companies from the sanitary informality.
"Some of them own inadequate facilities and this occurs especially due to the lack of information," he says.
"First we take techniques that can advise these companies and leave everything set. Only then comes the part of good production practices, the correct manipulation of raw materials," he explains.
According to Basílio, they even take information through summaries of congresses and seminars that take place in the city of São Paulo, the Brazilian economic center.
"We believe that through knowledge, the small entrepreneurs can find innovative solutions and launch differentiated products from the big companies. Thus going from regional participation, to national and finally international," he remarks.
The partnership between the Abihpec and the Sebrae was signed about one year ago. According to the president, for three years Sebrae has worked with groups similar to this one in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (in the South of Brazil), in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (both in the Southeast), Bahia (Northeast) and Pará (North).
The Sector
The beauty industry generates, in Brazil, more than 2 million jobs and had net revenues of about US$ 5.4 billion in 2004, where 98% of the companies are small and medium sized.
According to information from Abihpec, Brazilian exports of the sector increased 97.5% in the last five years. Last year, exports added up to US$ 334 million.
"This year the sector should export more than US$ 400 million to more than 140 countries," estimates the entity's president.
Contact
Abihpec
Telephone: +55 (11) 3372-9899
www.abihpec.org.br
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