Juan Valdez expands to the Brazilian market
As part of its international expansion strategy, Juan Valdez, the premium Colombian coffee brand, has officially launched in the Brazilian market. Beginning this month, Juan Valdez products will be available in 108 Pão de Açúcar stores. The strategy envisions an expansion of up to 2,100 retail points over the next few years.
Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA), owned by the French group Casino Guichard-Perrachon, has been active in the Brazilian market since 1945. With a total of 2,181 stores located throughout Brazil, GPA is the country’s largest supermarket retailer.
With its products now available in the Brazilian marketplace, Brazil is no the country with the strongest presence of Juan Valdez products in the supermarket category. The product portfolio for Brazil consists of 100 percent Colombian origin coffees from the regions of Huila, Tolima and Sierra Nevada. Each of these origins will be offered in a variety of cup profiles.
María Paula Moreno, international vice president of Procafecol, the company that manages the Bogotá, Colombia-based Juan Valdez Café brand, said, “After the United States, Brazil is the world’s second-leading coffee consuming country. It is one of the countries with the highest coffee consumption per capita in the world, with 5.1kg, it is number one in Latin America in terms of per capita. This makes Brazil an extremely attractive scenario for business expansion.”
She added that Brazil is a dynamic and diverse market. “Brazilians are interested in product variety and in learning about coffee. We believe that our arrival will be successful because the interest for specialty coffees among Brazilians is on the rise,” said Moreno.
There are currently a total of 362 Juan Valdez Cafés operating worldwide. There are 224 in Colombia and 118 are in Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Aruba, the US, Spain, Kuwait, Malaysia, Curacao and Bahrain. In terms of supermarket chains, Juan Valdez products are distributed in 23 countries other than Colombia.
For every cup or product that bares the Juan Valdez brand signature, small-scale Colombian coffee producers receive royalties that are invested in community welfare programs.
Juan Valdez is the only internationally recognized brand that belongs to coffee producers. Inspired in the icon that has represented Café de Colombia for over 50 years, in 2002 the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation – a non-profit organization that represents more than 500,000 Colombian coffee producing families – created the Juan Valdez brand for coffee shops and value added businesses.