Brazilian company Guaranamazon, a maker of organic products from guaraná, the most Brazilian of fruit, is about to win the foreign market. While negotiating with importers from Portugal and Chile, the company is seeking contacts with the neighbouring Argentina, Venezuela and Peru, and with more distant markets, in the Middle East and North Africa.
“I consider the Arab market very interesting. We have not yet participated in any fair in the region as, due to being a micro company, we do not yet have so high investment capital. But we believe that if we do our homework correctly, and start selling to our neighbours, we may get ready to supply a market that is as demanding as the Arab one,” said company partner Silvio Proença da Silva.
Guaranamazon works with production of raw guaraná and also with the processed product, in capsules, tea, syrup and cereal bars and is now getting ready to release a new product, called Gpower, a sparkling energy drink that has minerals and Amazon guaraná caffeine.
According to Silva, the energy drink is a recipe created by the residents of the region, who mix guaraná, mirantã (vasodilator), water, limes and stevia (honey herb) – to sweeten the product.
“The beverage is pioneering and brings two important products for the human body: calories and minerals, all organic and certified,” he pointed out.
The first shipment of 60,000 cans of GPower should be shipped in the first half of the year. “We are defining the partner to bottle Gpower and also the site for release of the product. Probably São Paulo,” said the businessman.
Distribution of company products is in the hands of Guaraná Brasil, which belongs to the same group. The company is located in Manaus, in the Amazon, and has the support of the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae), the Manaus Free Zone Superintendence (Suframa) and of the Amazon Biotechnology Center (CBA).
With six temporary and three full-time employees, Guaranamazon Agro Industrial contributes to the employment and revenues of over 1,800 small farmers in the city of Maués, 267 kilometres away from Amazonas state capital Manaus.
A former architecture technician during the construction of Vila de Balbina Hydroelectric Power Plant, in the 1980s, Silva started investing in Guaraná in 1999, researching opportunities for trade of derivatives of the plant from the Amazon, used by natives as an energy source.
With an entrepreneurial point of view, the owner of Guaranamazon has implemented a system similar to outsourcing, favoring small organic guaraná farmers in the Maués community, purchasing seven to ten tons per crop, on average.
From grains certified by Ecocert and IBD, certifiers of organic inputs, raw guaraná products were developed in the form of capsules, pouches and cereal bars. “At the start of activities, we did not reach the sale and profit targets as we were far from the capital, where there was already a broad informal guaraná powder and capsule market, but with low quality criteria,” recalls Silva.
According to him, it was at the Incubation Business Development Center (CIDE) that they found the necessary support and incentives for structuring the company and developing products with technology, scientific knowledge of properties and following an ecologically correct style.
Now, the company is taking its first firm and ambitious steps in the direction of the foreign market.
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Telephone: (+55 92) 3184.0811
E-mail: guaranaorganico@yahoo.com.br
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