Dulce de leche miner tests new markets and falls in like foreign palates

The taste of homemade dulce de leche de Minas Gerais fell in like foreign palates. The State already is the largest exporter of the product, followed by São Paulo and Santa Catarina, according to data from foreign trade unit Exportaminas Government. Today, most entrepreneurs are small manufacturers of southern Minas Gerais with a history quite similar: almost everyone started producing the candy in pans, kitchens, farms with milk from their own herds. While parents have initiated sales of the product in bars and small stores in the region, the children, now they''re crawling in the exporting market. Some of them, for now, use of trading companies to ship lots of sweet milk, but the goal is to become direct exporters quickly.
For 17 years the family Salles Days realized that the dulce de leche Albamy''s mother prepared for his family liked the whole neighborhood and friends, so much so that the orders have become daily. The sweet cream type Switzerland was prepared in the basement of his own home, on Fazenda São Gabriel, the Machado, Minas Gerais. The business was so successful that today are already 100 employees.
"We started with 30 liters of milk a day and today are processed more than 10000 liters daily, exceeding 8 tons of candy," says Marcos Eduardo Salles Days, Director of Mines Indústria e Comércio Ltda, and one of the sons of owner Albamy. In addition to the dulce de leche, the company manufactures 6 tons every day of fruit-based sweets typical of the region, which has conquered consumers in several countries.
The greatest difficulty of Mines, right now, is to get the record for shipments of dulce de leche. Meanwhile, the product is placed on the external market through trading companies. According to the Executive, pleads with the Department of inspection of Animal products (Dipoa) registration in the Federal inspection service (SIF) to do their foreign sales. "We have an outdated legislation. The same law that governs applies to exports the dulce de leche, which is no longer in natura, "complains.
Today 70% of the company''s revenue come from the traditional sweet and, of this amount, only 5% are from abroad, remittances account S Days, who hopes to start direct exports to New Jersey, in the United States, in December. "The American market is potentially invaluable to our dulce de leche", summarizes.
José Roberto S, principal owner of the Gate dulce de leche Cambuí, lives the same problem of not being able to make direct sales to the United States. "We are in the process of adaptation of the company to export directly and it must happen from the end of the year," he says. The volume exported today, he points out, is 500 pounds a month for New Jersey, in the United States. "The goal is to expand shipments to that market and conquer other countries of Europe. Our production capacity is of 100000 tons/month and we have ability to double the volume. Today it is possible to Board 50 tons per month, "he predicts.
The factory installed in Gate in Cambuí, Sul de Minas, also began with the father making candy in pan and supplying bars and stores of the city, in the 1960. "At the time he was about 20 pounds of candy per day in the Pan and that homemade production was until 1994", says the Director, who decided to do chemical engineering to take care of business. Today there are 50 employees. "We started thinking about the possibility of exporting five years ago, but a year and a half ago started shipments through a trading", says the principal owner, who already think of franchising in the country soon.
Ricardo Cotta, Director of institutional relations of the Itambé Alimentos S/A, the dulce de leche is still a niche to be explored in exports. "The accumulated from January to August of 2016, for example, Brazil exported 30000 tons of dairy products. Of this total only 102 tonnes were of dulce de leche, "she says. Most of the countries, he adds, has no habit of consumption. "The United States are the big buyers because of the amount of latinos who reside there," he explains.
Excited by the American market, and another part by Arab countries, the Itambé, exporting the sweet a decade ago, see revenue grow year by year. To get an idea of the 102 tons shipped during the first eight months of the year, according to Terra Cotta, the mining was responsible for 65 tons, against 34 tons in the same period last year. "Almost doubled the volume so far", he celebrates. Of the seven units of the Itambé, four of them are in the State of Minas Gerais.
United States buy the bulk of shipments
Arthur Bernardes Foundation (Funarbe) also plans to put your sweet milk abroad. According to Eliane Rodrigues Santos Valley, commercial and financial supervision of the Foundation for medium-and long-term plans for the Funarbe start sending shipments out of the country. Today, however, the "current drive cannot meet even the domestic market, but the dairy has already received requests from abroad for the sweet that is made almost handmade in Viçosa, Minas Gerais," he says. According to Eliane, a second is under construction.
Although with figures still modest, the product typically miner has been one of the highlights of the trade balance of the State, which has traditional items such as iron ore, coffee, sugar, gold and precious stones. Between January and August, shipments of sweet milk totaled $106,420, last given released, followed by the State of São Paulo with stripes $27070 and Santa Catarina with $13060.
In those eight months the product sent to the United States accounted for 83.8% of mining exports. The remainder went to the United Kingdom, Angola and neighboring Bolivia.