Some projects take us to pastry factories in UK or bun factories in Russia, others to mills in Malmö or bio-refineries in Norrköping while other Projects can take us to exhibitions in Shanghai!
For the first time in Asia, Lantmännen Cerealia has exhibited at SIAL – Asia’s largest food innovation exhibition with more than 75 000 visitors. Together with the team from Business Development and Export at Cerealia I got the chance to help prepare our participation. The exhibition was a great opportunity for us to promote our export assortment! AXA Swedish Harvest müsli and granola, Finn Crisp as well as our new organic baby food assortment Little Farmer that was launched a month ago in Sweden! It was actually decided in the last minute (one month before the exhibition started) to attend the exhibition which meant a few hectic weeks of preparation for all of us before going. But who says big companies cannot move quickly when they want to?
Our team at SIAL was made up of our Asia Sales Director Jiaqian Ouyang, our Business Development Manager for New Business (and Little Farmer expert) Johanna Freijd, our Brand Manager for START! UA Anna Zarytska and myself. We spent 3 full days talking to existing and potential customers, gaining both valuable market insights but also feedback regarding our products. The exhibition also offered valuable opportunities to do trendspotting and a way to better understand the competition and market landscape in China. For me personally it was also good to be able to put my Chinese back into professional use after having been away from China for almost 2 years.
The days following the exhibition were filled with meetings with customers, and other types of potential partners in order to ramp up our sales in China as well as some further market research.
再见！
Aron