Natural Ingredients for Food Peru

This programme covers four sectors: grains and pulses; functional ingredients; fruit ingredients; and herbs and spices. Our main goal is to help exporters of these products to do more business in Europe.

European demand for natural food ingredients is high. Many Peruvian companies in this sector have a lot of export potential. They need support and assistance in getting ready for the European market.

Our focus is mainly on niche or unconventional products. Peru has many of these. For example, rare varieties of quinoa or corn. We want to help producers add value to their products. For example, by investing in processing and certification. Then we want to help them find good markets for these higher-value exports. This will give them more income and strengthen Peru’s economy.

On top of coaching and training individual companies, we are also working to strengthen the whole sector.

Project details

This project began in 2015 and will end in 2018. In 2015 we selected participating companies. Then we invited them to Europe to receive export marketing training. They also visited European businesses and trade events. This has helped them to understand the European market better. Our experts also visit each company individually at their own location.

An important topic on the European food market is food safety. We are helping the participants in our project get food safety certification, for example HACCP and BRC.

Another topic is dealing with Europe’s Novel Foods regulations. This is a set of laws for food products that are imported into Europe for the first time. Such products have to undergo many tests to make sure they are safe and healthy. For individual export companies this is very expensive. We are helping the sector tackle this together.

We are also helping the sector brand itself. This will help it to get a clear position on the market and attract more business.

Project participants and products

A total of 19 companies are taking part in this project. They export many interesting products:

Ancient grains & pulses

• Quinoa, kaniwa, amarath
• Large white corn, chulpe corn, purple corn, montana corn
• Fava beans, tarwi
• Chia, sesame

Functional ingredients

• Mesquite, maca, camu camu, yacon, sacha inchi, acai   

Fruit ingredients

• Fruit puree/slices: apple, quince, sweet potato, strawberry, mango, pear, peach, elderberry
• Dehydrated fruits: goldenberry (physalis), mango, lucuma, acai, lucuma, pineapple

Herbs and spices

• Various Andean peppers, oregano, paprika
• Colorants: achiote/annatto, turmeric   
• Cocoa (nibbs, powder), olives, purple corn syrups, yacon syrups

Meet the participants

• You can contact CBI to get in touch with these exporters.

• Another possibility is to meet these potential suppliers at one of the next big trade fairs we will attend with them in Europe. Contact CBI for further details.

Partners

CBI is working with several Peruvian government agencies and business support organisations in this project:

• PromPeru, the government’s export promotion agency
• Adex, Peru’s exporters association
• Lima Chamber of Commerce
• Sierra Exportadora, an inter-governmental Peruvian development company

Get involved as an importer

Are you a European importer interested in natural ingredients and processed food from Peru? If you are, you can contact CBI to find out more or to meet with potential suppliers who have been trained for export to Europe.

Get involved in this project