Culinaria Fine Food in Belgrade - September 28-30

Culinaria Fine Food fair, which will be an opportunity for the Serbian food manufacturers to present their products to the buyers from all around the world, will be held between September 28 and 30, 2011, at Belexpocentar in Belgrade. The fair is intended for professional buyers who will have the chance to see an abundance of high-quality food from Serbia.

This is the second Culinaria Fine Food fair. Last year's exhibition attracted 3,000 visitors, as well as exporters, importers, traders, supermarket chains, specialized delicatessen stores, and HoReCa buyers.

This event is one of numerous campaigns of the USAID Agribusiness Project, which helps promotion of the Serbian food in the markets in the country and abroad.

- Culinaria Fine Food is conceived to bring foreign buyers to Serbia, which will enable smaller companies in the country and the region to market their products abroad - said Ramer Lane, marketing and sales adviser at the USAID Agribusiness Project.

He explained that the Serbian manufacturers had been waiting for many years to export their products to the world, but the intention of Culinaria Fine Food was to bring the world to Serbia. The organization of this event is entrusted to the company Zizgin.

- The number of companies from Serbia in the global market is not big enough, although certain companies achieve excellent export results. Among such companies are Next, of which juices can be found even in Bangkok, and Sabacka Mlekara (Sabac Dairy), of which cheese and milk cream are available in Chicago - said Lane.

- Our aim is to primarily enable small and medium-sized enterprises that have never exported their products before to access the market.

For that purpose, USAID has started a training programme for 150 such companies, mainly from the south of Serbia, to learn how to exhibit their products at trade fairs. Fifteen of them will have the chance at the forthcoming Culinaria Fine Food to exhibit their products for the first time.

The organizers of the fair covered the costs of the visit to last year's Culinaria Fine Food for 60 professional buyers from 14 countries, including TESCO from Great Britain and Central Europe, LILD from Croatia, the biggest importers in the USA and Canada for the products from Southeast Europe, and others. The same thing will happen this year, and the organizers have already started promoting Culinaria fair at international trade fairs Sial in Paris, Inter Food and Drink in Sofia, Indagara in Bucharest, and others.

- Many people from abroad who visited us in 2010 have already confirmed their arrival this year, but we have also expanded the list of visitors. We will do our best to bring partners from Sweden in September and, thus, present ourselves to people in that part of Europe as well. There will also be a Turkish pavilion this year, while the partners from India have already confirmed their arrival next year - Zizgin CEO Zivko Maletkovic said for eKapija.