Brazilian company Sadia, a producer of meats and meat products, has a 25% market share in the beef, whole-chicken and chicken-in-part markets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, all countries in the Gulf.
This information was disclosed by the company last week. The brand is the leader in these countries and sectors, according to a research by consultancy company MEMRB, from Cyprus, which operates in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
According to material disclosed by the Sadia press department, this market share is the result of continuous work developed by the company in the region since the 1980s, when the group started selling frozen chicken to some countries in the Middle East.
Currently, the region imports 1.2 billion Brazilian reais (US$ 730 million) a year from the Brazilian company, which answers to 26% of the Sadia shipments abroad.
Next year, the company is planning to expand its presence in the region even further, with the start of operations of a fully owned factory in the United Arab Emirates. The unit should start being built in the second half of this year and should receive investment of 150 million reais (US$ 91.2 million) and is going to produce industrialized poultry and beef. The plant's capacity should be 50,000 tons a year.
The company started promoting its brand in the Middle East in 1985, when they created character Henrietta and began advertising campaigns. The campaign associated the product to housewives, to the home. Later, the advertising campaigns in the region started pointing out how healthy and safe Sadia products are.
Advertising in the region currently explores the flavor and trustworthiness of the product, which strictly follows the slaughter methods required by Islam.
Sadia currently sells raw and industrialized poultry in the Middle East. The company is one of the great exporters of meats in Brazil.
In the first half of this year, Sadia had export revenues of 2.6 billion reais (US$ 1.6 billion), growth of 30% over the same period in 2007. The volume traded was 590,800 tons, with growth of 7%. The poultry sector played a fundamental part in this performance.
Anba
