Audio: Seminars to Promote U.S. Pork in Competitive Colombian Market

The U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) will conduct two educational seminars on U.S. pork this week in Colombia. The seminars, to be held in Bogota and Medellin, will focus on helping importers, distributors and foodservice companies with the technical and commercial aspects of handling and merchandising fresh and frozen U.S. pork.

Greg Hanes, USMEF assistant vice president for international marketing, says the timing is right to engage new and existing customers in Colombia who want to learn more about U.S. pork. Hanes will conduct the seminars with USMEF Technical Services Manager Cheyenne McEndaffer and Jessica Julca, USMEF representative in South America.

Hanes notes that the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement opened up a lot of opportunities for U.S. exporters, but competition in the region has also grown more intense. Educating potential customers about the value and quality of U.S. pork is one strategy for setting it apart from the competition. He adds that buyers from Ecuador, a small but growing market for U.S. pork, will also be attending the Bogota seminar.

TRANSCRIPT:

Ralph Loos: In this U.S. Meat Export Federation report, we speak with Assistant Vice President for International Marketing Greg Hanes. Hanes is in Colombia this week for a pair of educational seminars promoting U.S. pork.

Greg Hanes: We’re going to be doing two seminars here in Columbia, the first one will be in Bogota and the second one will be in Medellin. Really the focus of this will be working with the importers and the distributors, as well as some of their customers – some of the foodservice and retail chains, as well. They have a growing interest in American pork, so we’ll be working kind of from the technical aspect, talking about the production, the safety and the proper handling of fresh and frozen U.S. pork. I’ll also be giving them a kind of update on the current market conditions. The seminar that will be conducted in Bogota will also be a bit regional in nature. We’ve invited some of the buyers from Ecuador, as well, so we’ll have several of their key distributors and importers flying in and actually attending this seminar, as well.

Ralph Loos: After the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement took effect in 2012, Colombia quickly became the largest destination of U.S. pork in the Central/South America region. However, the U.S. faces intense competition from countries like Canada and Chile, so the seminars are aimed at winning new customers as well as defending existing U.S. market share.

Greg Hanes: What we’ve seen is that with competition from South America, as well as our neighbors to the north, there has been much more price competition in the market there. So one of our objectives is to kind of really move away from that and focus on the quality and the different attributes of the product, so this will really be focusing on that. And at the same time now, we are seeing that U.S. product is becoming much more price competitive, so we hope to really be able to leverage the competitiveness of our pricing now with the quality and the unique attributes that we can use to really set ourselves apart from the competition on just how our product is produced.

Ralph Loos: For more on this and other trade issues, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Ralph Loos.