Exporting ingredients and fresh foods to Germany

2016-11-01T16:28:03+00:00January 4th, 2016|Tags: , , , , |

Inspired by cooking shows and the importance of healthy living, German consumers are more conscious about their food intake. They increasingly look for health, food and cosmetic products with natural ingredients and are switching to fresh foods in their cooking. For the German Import Promotion Desk, we looked into the markets for fresh beans and pulses, fresh herbs, baby vegetables, gums and resins and olive oil. For these products, we identified opportunities for developing countries by determining (potential) sources of competition, buyer requirements and relevant trends in Germany. These studies will be available on the CBI website, under the sectors Fresh [Read more]

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Promoting sustainable sourcing in Pakistan

2016-11-01T16:28:03+00:00December 22nd, 2015|Tags: , , |

Northern Pakistan has a rich biodiversity which is threatened due to poverty and limited options for sustainable livelihoods. ProFound joined up with the UNDP-GE Mountains and Markets project, which aims to improve the livelihoods of local communities, by providing sustainable solutions to use the rich biodiversity. In early November, ProFound trainers visited Northern Pakistan together with the Dutch government agency CBI (promoting imports from developing countries) and the Mountains and Markets project. To promote good collection and processing practices as well as sustainable sourcing from these mountain areas, the team visited local cultivation and wild collection areas as well as local processors [Read more]

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CSR improvement in South Africa

2016-11-01T16:28:03+00:00December 17th, 2015|Tags: , , |

ProFound helped develop company action plans for participants in the South African export coaching programme, as well as a sector strategy to improve sustainability in the country’s natural ingredients sector. We supported a sector analysis and company audits focusing on corporate social responsibility. Together with CBI’s CSR manager, experts and Sandra Kruger and Associates in South Africa, ProFound adjusted existing CSR tools to cater to realities on the ground in South African natural ingredients – particularly for wild-collected ingredients. These tools will also prove useful in other natural ingredient programmes. The outcomes of the analysis were quite clear: although awareness [Read more]

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Training South African health ingredients companies

2016-11-01T16:28:08+00:00December 3rd, 2015|Tags: , , |

Effective export marketing requires planning: knowing how you are going to position yourself on the market and what that involves in terms of product development, distribution, pricing and promotion. This requires that you understand both your company and the market, and that you can connect the two. It also involves making choices on corporate social responsibility: what are the commitments your company wants to make and how should that be reflected in export marketing? Once this is done, companies need to make an action plan and consider which financial and human resources they need to put it into practice. IN2NI [Read more]

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Supporting South Africa’s National Conference

2016-11-01T16:28:08+00:00December 2nd, 2015|Tags: , |

The Department of Trade Industry in South Africa, with support from CBI and ProFound, organised the first National Conference on Natural Ingredients on the 17th and 18th of November in Pretoria. The conference brought together companies operating in the sector, including raw material producers, processors, exporters and final product manufacturers with representatives from the public sector and academia. In sessions with key speakers and panel discussions, the 180 participants discussed opportunities and actions at different levels of the value chain and looked at the business enabling environment. Together with CBI institutional development consultant Jim Tersteeg, ProFound consultant Robbie Hogervorst provided [Read more]

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Unlocking the potential of South Africa

2019-04-16T14:50:31+00:00November 30th, 2015|Tags: , , , |

South Africa is known for its unique biodiversity and natural resources. ProFound looked into the opportunities on the European market for these products, to support our sector development activities in South Africa, together with CBI. We analysed the potential of South African MAPs (medicinal and aromatic plants) and their extracts, essential oils and vegetable oils as natural ingredients in cosmetic and health products. Moreover, we developed a profile of the sector, looking into the potential to produce and export natural ingredients, South Africa's image on the international market and marketing strategies. The analysis was commissioned by CBI and can be found on [Read more]

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Championing Vietnamese tea and honey

2016-11-01T16:28:08+00:00June 2nd, 2015|Tags: , , , |

Thinking of Vietnam, most people picture beautiful country sides, rice fields, mountains and cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Tea and honey hardly come to mind. ProFound is taking up the challenge to find the opportunities for these lesser known Vietnamese products on the European market. Vietnam produces high quality tea, but the country’s reputation has not yet spread to Europe. The case is different for Vietnamese honey. In 2007, Vietnamese honey was banned from the European market. Since the ban lifted in 2013, Vietnam has been working to re-establish its key position in the global honey trade. To [Read more]

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Market Orientation at In-Cosmetics

2016-11-01T16:28:08+00:00April 28th, 2015|Tags: , , , |

At the In-Cosmetics trade fair in Barcelona, Robbie Hogervorst and CBI cosmetic ingredient export Andrew Jones organised a market orientation mission, to help SME exporters of natural ingredients get ready to export to Europe. Over 30 companies and business support organisations from South Africa and Latin America took part in this mission. The mission in Barcelona helped companies verify their market entry strategy. The companies met with potential buyers and came to a better understanding of what they need to enter the European market. What’s more, the trade fair introduced them to their competitors from Europe, as well as from [Read more]

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Facilitating the South African natural ingredients sector

2016-10-11T12:40:23+00:00April 2nd, 2015|Tags: , , , , |

South Africa has a great potential to become a leader in Natural Ingredients. Unfortunately, the business environment is not enabling the sector to take full advantage of the country´s position. For that reason, Robbie Hogervorst went to South Africa, together with CBI´s institutional expert Jim Tersteeg to visit stakeholders that could play a key role in improving a business enabling environment. During this mission, forward actions were discussed. South Africa has a sound foundation to develop and market high quality and innovative ingredients for the health, cosmetics and food sectors. This foundation is built on the country’s biodiversity, diversity in [Read more]

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Strategic Conferences in South Africa: Natural Ingredients

2016-10-11T12:41:02+00:00March 23rd, 2015|Tags: , |

ProFound conducted a series of regional conferences for CBI’s natural ingredients project to follow-up on earlier strategic conferences held in December 2014. The first conferences focused on export development; the second series of conferences took one step further by looking at export promotion, e.g. developing the right product for the right market, supported by the right promotion and marketing mix. Of course, research is vital to such efforts. As such, the conferences not only brought together companies and public sector officials from key departments at local and national level, but also brought in researchers from universities and research institutes with research programmes [Read more]

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