Sri Lankan SMEs find global buyers at India food show

ECONOMYNEXT – A delegation of Sri Lankan small and medium enterprises have found buyers from around the world after attending a food fair in India.

“We found importers from India, USA and South Africa for exporting of spices, organic pepper, cinnamon and coconut oil. At present we are negotiating with these buyers” said Sunil Atapattu, Managing Director, Rainbow Marketing (Pvt) Ltd.

The Indusfood-Tech 2020 is an annual international trade fair organised by the Trade Promotion Council of India (TPCI) and was held from January 8th to 10th at the India Exposition Mart, Greater Noida this year.

The fair saw participation of over 1,200 Indian business partners and 600 buyers.

Sectors covered at the trade fair includes food and beverage processing, drink technology, food packaging and labelling, automation and controls and supply chain solutions.

The fair attracted delegates from countries such as Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Netherlands, Russia and USA

Chandana Deepal, Director, Chutiduwa Group of Companies said that his participation helped to learn the importance of value addition to products export from Sri Lanka considering the quantum of value addition that has helped India to expand their market segments for Indian spices and confectionary.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce facilitated the participation of Sri Lankan SMEs.

The main objective of participation was to identify potential buyers to promote products from Sri Lanka, sourcing machinery, equipment and raw materials required for the food industry. In addition, SMEs were facilitated to observe market requirements, strengths of competitors, labelling requirements and pricing.

“All the delegates received positive responses at the trade fair, and we will consider our participation at the Indusfood-Tech 2021 as well. Our participation made several inroads to enter into Indian market due to large number of positive responses received” said Lilakshini de Mel, senior assistant secretary general of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

India’s consumption of the food and beverage segment domestically is expected to reach to 1.142 trillion US dollar by 2025. Growing level of income, falling poverty, changing lifestyles and companies racing to capture India’s middle and upper middle class consumers will cause the food market to evolve dramatically in the coming years (Colombo/Jan21/2020)

https://economynext.com/sri-lankan-smes-find-global-buyers-at-india-food-show-41291/