Colombia has been identified as a market with a lot of potential for U.S. turkey exports, said Ernesto Baron, consultant for Latin America and the Caribbean with the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council (USAPEEC).
While speaking during the USAPEEC Virtual Winter Meeting on December 17, Baron told of Colombia’s current position as one of the U.S. turkey industry’s more important markets, and how USAPEEC hopes the country’s demand for U.S. turkey will increase as a result of a new marketing campaign.
“(Colombia) is certainly one of our top markets for turkey in Latin America, not only for commodity products for retail, but also, we see products going down there for further processing,” said Baron. “Colombia has one of the most developed further processing industries in the region, and also a lot of value-added products are going down there for retail.”
Baron said Colombia has a growing middle class, which means those consumers are better able to purchase value-added turkey products. There is also an increasing number of health-conscious consumers in the country, and they recognize turkey meat as a healthy protein option.
In an effort to expand U.S. turkey’s reach into the South American country, USAPEEC, conducted a turkey marketing campaign to promote value-added U.S. turkey products in the Colombian market. The campaign was sponsored by Indiana Corn.
As part of that campaign, Baron said, one of the key objectives was to work with traditional and digital retailers to make sure they added the stock-keeping unit (SKU) barcodes for value-added turkey products to those retailers’ online platforms.
“We hope to be able to grow the market. We had a very good campaign, we worked with both importers and retailers in identifying new products to introduce into the market, one of the key objectives was to introduce the SKUs into their online sales platforms,” Baron explained.
“You might have the product, you might have all the stock you want, but if that barcode hasn’t been scanned into their systems, and they don’t have it available for those online platforms, you’re not going to be able to buy the products.”
One sign that the campaign was successful was that in one instance, once the SKU for one product was entered in the online platform, the product sold out. A pause had to be taken with the sales until more product was available, he said.
