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Colombia recently held its first post-pandemic trade forum in two cities, bringing in a U.S. delegation that included 10 Georgia companies as the country sought to position itself as a reliable sourcing partner in an age of uncertain supply chains.
Investment, tourism and trade promotion agency ProColombia named the United States as the forum’s guest of honor, celebrating 200 years of bilateral relations between the two countries and the 10th anniversary of the free-trade agreement that removed tariffs on most products traded between the countries.
Georgia firms, including some owned by members of the state’s Colombian diaspora, were among those participating in the 90th annual matchmaking forum held March 25-April 1.
Traditionally held in the capital city of Bogotá, the tradeshow traveled to Medellin and Cali to bring foreign investors closer to production centers.
Illustrating the Cali forum’s importance for promoting Colombian small and medium-sized enterprises, Colombian President Ivan Duque provided opening remarks. A Global Atlanta reporter was on hand to observe how companies were navigating the new global trading environment.
In his speech, Mr. Duque said the companies assembled were showing with their entrepreneurial drive how Colombia might carve paths to globally for more of its locally made products.
“It is also an opportunity to bring investment, it is an opportunity to demonstrate that the world of trade and business is where human courage can be found, willing to take risks, generate jobs and make social transformation,” the president said.
Speaking alongside Mr. Duque were ProColombia President Flavia Santoro Trujillo, Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina and Luis Fernando Pérez Pérez, president of the Cali Chamber of Commerce, as well as Maria Ximena Lombana from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.
ProColombia’s closest full office in the Southeast U.S. is in Miami, but it also has a satellite in Atlanta run by Hernando Galindo, who helped recruit companies for the mission. Atlanta has also been an important target for the country’s efforts to diversify its investment base in the U.S., a fact proven by frequent visits from the country’s former ambassador, Francisco Santos, who promoted links in IT and fintech.
Colombians in Georgia Explore Opportunities Back Home
For Julio Bayona, president and founder of Cumming, Ga.-based The Ricky Joy Co., a provider of kids’ yogurt beverages and candy, the forum provided an opportunity to reconnect with roots and evaluate the opportunities in his native country at a time of transition in his own business.
Now sourcing from six countries in Asia, Ricky Joy faced supply-chain challenges during the pandemic, though it made some strides and gained shelf space by ordering extra inventory early in 2020, Mr. Bayona told Global Atlanta.
Still, the company is opening a factory in Georgia to shorten its cash cycle, and is seeking suppliers of fruits and other ingredients in Colombia. It’s also purchasing a plantain processing factory in coffee country near Mr. Bayona’s hometown of Palmira, just outside of Cali.
“We have a huge opportunity in Cali for sourcing agricultural products, all kinds of food products,” he said. “It’s just a matter of getting those products ready for export.”
Mr. Bayona, who sent a representative to the conference but didn’t attend in person, said Colombia has some work to do to catch up with Asian nations in terms of their appetite and preparedness for international business.
“Colombians are really good in quality and production; they are not necessarily very competitive in pricing. That’s one of the issues,” he said, noting Asian companies are often scaled for volume. “In our culture – I’m not talking about only Colombia, I’m talking about Latin America – sometimes when you want to negotiate they want to put the price depending on who the customer is.”
Ximena Rozo, a Colombia-born designer in Columbus, Ga., gladly accepted an invitation from ProColombia to travel to the show in search of partners to provide both raw materials and manufacturing expertise for her textiles and home products.
Far from simple handicrafts, Ms. Rozo blends a modern design aesthetic with tried-and-true methods embraced by locals to “co-create” products that will be desirable among American consumers. Her new collection, Hilo Sagrado, is a testament to that synthesis.
She skipped the Medellin leg of the show, which she saw as mostly focused on fashion, and went to Cali at a pivotal time in her business as well, as she recently launched a crowd-funding campaign to further professionalize what has been a second full-time job.
She unexpectedly found not just suppliers but also potential collaborators for later collections.
“They were there as sellers, but their capabilities were so cool, so I ended up playing the role of the buyer and also seller,” she said, noting that being there as an official participant helped her feel that she was “bringing it up a notch” as a company.
Shifting From Coal to Confections
As usual, the Matchmaking Forum organized by ProColombia focused on Colombian non-mining and non-energy export sector, seeking to help diversify the country’s export base beyond coal and oil while strengthening its entrepreneurial class.
Non-energy exports grew 18.7 percent over 2019 levels to $18.2 billion last year, according to Ms. Trujillo, the ProColombia president, told Global Atlanta in an interview.
Colombia is seeking to ramp up exports in chemicals and life sciences (pharmaceuticals), along with sectors where Georgia companies are already sourcing, such as apparel, manufacturing (Industry 4.0) and agri-food. Colombia would like to introduce sheep, poultry and other meat products to the trade relationship as soon as possible, though that could be a tall order given the strength of the U.S. farm sector.
Ms. Trujillo told Global Atlanta that she met earlier this year with Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, to discuss possibilities to expand opportunities in the burgeoning green-energy sector.
According to Juan Carlos López Gutiérrez, based in Bogota as managing director of the Colombia and Mexico offices at the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Colombia is working to transition the fossil fuel and petroleum-related power industry into greener renewable energy.
Georgia has recently announced two electric-vehicle factories, following on from a major EV battery plant that touched off an effort to bring the entire supply chain for the sector to the state. That expertise could be useful in Colombia.
“Investment in solar grid solutions such as hydrogen and other green alternatives are opening up,” Mr. Lopez said. “Compared to other regions in Latin America, Colombia has been the one country that has demonstrated a lot of development in the green-energy industry.”
Georgia firms can find sweet opportunities in other sectors as Colombian firms explore their options for selling abroad, Global Atlanta’s Aurora Perez learned in her dispatch to Colombia.
Organized by ProColombia, the trip included meetings with representatives from Colombina, Manitoba, Del Alba, Aldor and Dulces Celis as well as a few factory visits to competitive brands in the Valle del Cauca, where the first four companies above are located.
The region’s agricultural abundance, particularly in sugarcane, has contributed to their sustainability and competitiveness, but many face challenges in expanding globally.
Mariana Dorronsoro, head of international sales at Del Alba, a 20-year exporter of premium nuts, grains and fruits, said the company signed up for the ProColombia forum in hopes of boosting exports in the Western Hemisphere, especially as rising logistics costs make selling further afield more expensive.
“We had some very strategic meetings with supermarkets abroad, so our goal is to reach more supermarkets abroad in the Americas, she said. “It is important to sell nearby because when selling to Europe sometimes you have a container, and [these] prices have doubled or tripled.”
In the Southeast United States, Del Alba currently sells to Publix and Winn-Dixie.
Other companies visited by Global Atlanta illustrated a conundrum outlined by Mr. Bayona of Ricky Joy: many Colombian suppliers are either so large and profitable that they are not interested in taking on the risk of selling abroad, or they are small or medium-sized businesses that often are not feasibly ready for the rigorous process.
Visiting one of 70 storefronts operated by Colombina, a massive confectionary, Global Atlanta learned that the company is more interested in maintaining market share in traditional locales than it is in further global expansion, save for perhaps in the African market, according to Confectionary Manager Andres Sanchez Tejada. Colombina is so entrenched in Colombians’ childhood memories, Mr. Sanchez said, the product name “bon bon bum” is used as the colloquial term for lollipop.
Other large, family-run businesses see growth as a meaningful mission.
Leonardo Aljure runs Aldor, a large confectionary business founded by his father as a testament to the family’s dreams, livelihood and legacy. He shared how his father was a “very shrewd businessman” from the plastic industry who decided to “take advantage of Colombia’s sugar production” while trading in cocoa butter produced there.
Aldor would like to pursue expansion into the U.S. more aggressively and has come up with a soon-to-launch line called Viva Vita, a health-focused brand packed with micronutrients, seeing this as a new area of focus that is important in key markets around the world after the pandemic. But given the anticipated long approval process, emerging markets are still the company’s bread-and-butter for exports.
“We want to focus in neighboring markets like Venezuela and Ecuador,” Mr. Aljure said. “With everything that is happening in the world, supply chains are being reconsidered, and companies will look for suppliers close by because of the carbon footprint and for reliability.”
While Aldor’s contract manufacturing sales in the U.S. make up a small portion of their profit, their most important international consumer market is in Africa, where they began exporting in the 1990s. Aldor eventually built a factory in Johannesburg and now has its eyes on West Africa.
“We brought something new, something disruptive. There was not a lot of innovation. So we brought some of the Colombian flair, I would say in our expertise of lollipops, in marketing, and in building excitement to the brands. And actually, it was a very underdeveloped market.”
Following the Annual Matchmaking Forum, it was announced that ProColombia’s International Macro Business Matchmaking Forum will be held in the United States during the second half of 2022, continuing the celebration of the bicentennial of U.S.-Colombia relations.
-With additional reporting and editing by Trevor Williams
Editor’s disclosure: Global Atlanta was hosted at the buyer’s forum by ProColombia, which provided a free airline ticket and on the ground support that enabled a reporter to cover the event. The organization had no role or review in the crafting or publication of this article.
See more from Global Atlanta’s dispatch to the 2022 Global Matchmaking Forum in Cali, Colombia below:
![Aurora Perez[left] of Global Atlanta and Alyse Thompson [middle] of Candy Industry Magazine at BNP interview Mariana Dorronsoro[right], head of international sales at Del Alba. Photo by: Andrea Peña of ProColombia](https://i0.wp.com/www.globalatlanta.com/wp-content/uploads/e0b2f580-16f7-4fce-89b7-ae1ce4d12716.jpg?ssl=1 "e0b2f580-16f7-4fce-89b7-ae1ce4d12716")
![Owners of Celis [middle in blue shirt and far right], a sweets manufacturing business. Photo by: Andrea Peña of ProColombia](https://i0.wp.com/www.globalatlanta.com/wp-content/uploads/a0ae3433-5367-4d3e-838e-ad8cc7efa15b.jpg?ssl=1 "a0ae3433-5367-4d3e-838e-ad8cc7efa15b")