Pinoy SMEs Gearing Up for Opportunities to Enter Swedish Food Market

Left photo: Philippine banana chips presented to Swedish buyers at Ax Food AB. Center photo: Philippine food exporters on field study at a trendy Swedish organic food retail outlet. Right photo: Visit to the headquarters of the ICA Gruppen AB.

06 October 2017 STOCKHOLM -  Ten Filipino SMEs specializing in a range of organic and innovatively processed food products from coconut, corn, cane (muscovado), banana and other Philippine fruits and nuts are hoping to break into the Swedish food market as they present their products to the major Swedish food wholesalers and retailers on September 29 to October 02.

In a market where other Asian food players from Thailand, Viet Nam and China dominate, the Philippines may be a latecomer but it is confident that the current government’s robust support to micro, small, and medium-sized Filipino enterprises will enable more Filipino food products to be visible in the international scene.

One such program, managed by the Department of Trade and Industry’s Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB), is the RIPPLES Plus Program (Regional Interactive Platform for Philippine Exporters) which prepares Filipino SMEs to be able to compete on price, quantity, volume, quality and packaging, as well as to help build the capacity to comply with market-entry requirements and rules and regulations, and provide support for innovation, design promotion and market access. With agribusiness being among the priority sectors of the RIPPLES Plus Program, the visit of the ten Filipino SMEs to Sweden is hoped to provide the support for their aspirations to make it into the global market.

Through the guidance of the Philippine Trade and Investment Center in Stockholm, supported by the Philippine Embassy to the Nordic region based in Oslo, the Filipino SMEs met with major food market players in Sweden such as ICA Gruppen, AxFood AB and Asian food wholesaler Thai Fong, and retailers Asian market and Filippinska Asian Market. These interactions provided the opportunity to understand the features and trends in the Swedish food products market, as well as to present the possibilities that can be brought by various Filipino food products to Swedish food retailers and consumers. END

For more information, visit www.oslope.dfa.gov.ph/ www.philembassy.no\ or https://www.facebook.com/philembassy.no.

Outbound Business Matching Mission delegates from the Philippines at the Thai Fong Asia company warehouse