Food fair brings Baltic producers together

  • 2000-11-09
About 300 companies from 31 countries participated at the eighth Tallinn International Food Fair, held at the Estonian Fair Center from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3. Most of the foreign exhibitors were from Germany, Latvia and Lithuania. Reporter Kairi Kurm talked to the representatives of some Latvian and Lithuanian companies to find out what brought them to the fair.

1.Rimantas Damanskis, sales manager at Putoknis (Lithuania)

Putoknis is the manufacturer of P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate) preforms and bottles and an exclusive representative of ALCOA CSI closures for the Baltic states.

We are one of the biggest producers of P.E.T. bottles in the Baltic countries. We export over 70 percent of our products to Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Germany.

Also on the Estonian market we are (the biggest producers) for the fourth year now, and it is also the fourth time we have been to this fair. Our purpose was to meet our old clients. It is like a meeting place.

We are also introducing our new beer bottle at the exhibition. We were very successful with P.E.T. beer bottles in Latvia and Estonia, and see that Estonian breweries are also using P.E.T. as this packaging has lots of benefits.

2.Valdis Dulmanis, marketing director at "Pures cehs" (Latvia)

"Pures cehs" is a producer of fruit-berry additives for confectionary, yogurts, ice cream and other dairy products.

We are one of the biggest producers of jams for milk products and ice cream for all three Baltic states and we also export to Germany. We produce jam from ecologically pure Baltic fruits and berries.

This company has existed for six years, but it is our third year on the Estonian market. Our distributor in Estonia for the last six months has been Hadler, for whom we have exported products in the amount of 18,000 lats ($ 28,980).

We take part in all the Baltic food fairs. The exhibition in Vilnius is the biggest and is oriented mostly toward agriculture . The exhibitions in Riga are more related to food and the ones in Tallinn are organized for producers and restaurants.

3.Viktors Mende president of the Federation of Food Enterprises (Latvia)

The Federation of Food Enterprises is a professional association that represents the interests of Latvian food producers.

It is our fourth year at the Tallinn Food Fair, where we organize the Latvian exposition. Compared to previous years, the representation of Latvian companies has decreased at the fair. Three years ago we occupied an area three times bigger and we had far more companies. This year we have 14 companies compared to 30 in 1998.

These companies are producing different food products like mineral water, juice, candy, curds, jam, canned fish, pastry and milk products.

Latvian food producers are having a hard time because the production has decreased during the last couple of years. At the same time we are praising Estonian export policies. Estonia is exporting twice the food products to Latvia than Latvia exports to Estonia.

The Latvian companies came to the fair in order to introduce their new products and offer them to Estonian companies.

I guess that most of the big companies that participated in previous years have found their connections in Estonia and that is the reason they did not come this year. This time more medium-sized companies were represented.

4.Vaidotas Variavicius, manager at Vilniaus Margarino Gamykla (Lithuania)

Vilniaus Margarino Gamykla is a Norwegian-Danish margarine factory based in Vilnius.

Our market is the Baltics. We are not interested in Russian or Western markets. In Lithuania our brand is the biggest, and we hope that it will become the second biggest in Estonia by next year.

The company's exports to Estonia are not very big so far because it started its activities in July of this year. We want to increase our share from 1.5 percent to 15 percent of the margarine market in one year.

The sales of the company, which was established about one year ago, is approximately 20 million litas ($5 million).

It is interesting that in Estonia the consumption of margarine is so high - 80 percent, while butter is only 20 percent.

One of the things we wanted to achieve at the fair was to support our partners. They can tell their clients and customers that the representative of the company is here and if they have any further questions concerning the product, they can come and ask.