Brazil’s trade and investment promotion agency is considering Atlanta as a location to build a regional distribution center for Brazilian products and is eager to invite Georgia companies to form a trade mission to visit Brazil.

“We need partners in Atlanta, like supermarkets or retail stores, to buy our products,” said Juan Quirós, president of APEX Brasil, the country’s trade promotion agency.

“We invite representatives from various sectors to come to see our presentations of what Brazil has to offer,” he told GlobalAtlanta during the recent Sumaq Summit. The summit is an annual meeting of the top business schools in Latin America and Spain that features high-level speakers discussing business strategies in Latin America.

The regional distribution center would be a warehousing zone where Brazilian imports could be stored for distribution throughout the Southeast. “Atlanta is at the top of our list,” Mr. Quirós said of Brazil’s choice of possible locations for the center.

“It is the Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia’s job to make sure Atlanta remains at the top of the list of cities Brazil would choose,” one of the local chamber’s founding members, Lucia Jennings, told GlobalAtlanta.

Though APEX promotes Brazilian exports abroad, Mr. Quirós told Sumaq attendees that he is “here to help” any Georgia company wanting to invest in Brazil.

“We want more small and medium [sized] companies to be international players in Brazil…We are working to transform Brazil into a platform for export,” Mr. Quirós said, referring to the ability of any small business to set up operations in Brazil and export to other countries from there.

Brazil needs foreign multinational corporations to help it increase its degree of insertion into the global economy, as well as to open up to free trade agreements in the region, according to Leticia Costa, president of Booz Allen Hamilton, Brazil, who spoke on a panel about Brazil during a Sumaq session.

Contact the Brazilian chamber here at (404) 880-1551 or www.bacc-ga.com. Contact Mr. Quirós at Quirós@apexbrasil.com.br for more information.