“A chocolate with history, making history”. With this slogan, the Costa Rican SME Macaw Kakau – dedicated to the production of fine and aroma chocolate – has become known among its clients, both inside and outside our country. With its factory located in the South of Turrubares, this company exports its products to markets as sophisticated as New York (United States), England and Switzerland, a country well known precisely for its chocolates.
Macaw Kakau has a unique concept, since apart from producing their own cocoa and other ingredients such as coffee and ginger, they do so on a farm that they have turned into a biological corridor with endangered species. “Our history goes beyond chocolate and that is precisely what made the New York client select us, because we are chocolate producers and artisans,” said the company’s owner, Pablo Gordienko.
This American client was captured thanks to a meeting that Macaw Kakau had in the 2021 edition of the Buyers Trade Mission (BTM), the most important business conference in the Central American region organized by the Costa Rican Foreign Trade Promoter (PROCOMER) every year.
Three scheduled appointments
“For that edition of BTM we had three scheduled appointments: one was cancelled, for the other the person we were going to meet with got sick and we only had one appointment left, but we got the business. It took time, but we established an interesting relationship, since what they were looking for was the sale of products with history, like ours”, added Gordienko.
This SME was born six years ago planting cocoa in agroforestry systems with endangered species to create a biological corridor. They use only fine aroma cocoa, and employ 25 people from the area, of which 15 are women. In recent years, it has received support from the PROCOMER Regional Office in the Central Pacific through various export training and trade promotion activities.
“At BTM 2022 I am going to generate business. I am interested in establishing relationships with buyers who appreciate our products and with whom a long-term relationship can be created,” Gordienko concluded.
BTM 2022 refines details
On September 27th, the 24th edition of the BTM will begin and PROCOMER is fine-tuning details to receive more than 200 international buyers in person – at the Convention Center – and another 200 virtually.
Although this year the fair returns to face-to-face, the virtual component is also maintained for certain markets such as Israel, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries, China, Japan and Korea. In addition, the so-called “Reverse Missions” will be carried out, which consist of visits by buyers from advanced industries and education services to companies installed in Costa Rica and national universities, to learn about their facilities, capabilities and analyze the potential to do business. As in other face-to-face BTMs, there will be display cases for agricultural, food and specialized industry products.
The dynamics of business meetings is maintained: the Costa Rican exporter has 25 minutes to offer the benefits of their products through their sales pitch, samples, prices, logistics issues, among others. Subsequently, a follow-up process begins in which PROCOMER provides its support through its offices, both inside and outside the country.
