Tunisian Export Group Prepares Promotional Blitz

To boost the vis­i­bil­ity and sales of its extra vir­gin olive oil, the Tunisian Export Promotion Center (CEPEX) has embarked on an ambi­tious cam­paign fea­tur­ing 20 global pro­mo­tional events.

Officials said the goal of the events is to intro­duce Tunisian olive oil to new mar­kets and rein­force its pres­ence in tra­di­tional ones, such as Italy, Spain and the United States. Tunisian offi­cials are espe­cially keen to tar­get emerg­ing mar­kets such as China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

They also hope to strengthen rela­tion­ships in exist­ing mar­kets, includ­ing South Korea and the United Kingdom, which reduced tar­iffs on Tunisian olive oil imports in 2021.

Mourad Ben Hassin, the chief exec­u­tive of CEPEX, told a press con­fer­ence in Tunis that the events would include tast­ing days and culi­nary demon­stra­tions.

The cen­ter has already hosted a guided tast­ing and pro­mo­tional film screen­ing at an event in the Kenyan cap­i­tal of Nairobi on January 30^th, bring­ing together Tunisian exporters, Kenyan importers, and retail­ers.

A busi­ness-to-busi­ness meet­ing with a Congolese del­e­ga­tion in Tunis, where olive oil pro­duc­ers and exporters were present, was also hosted in early February.

CEPEX will be in Portugal for the Lisbon Food Fair in March, fol­lowed by Comsoprof in Bologna, Italy in March.

In May, CEPEX will also orga­nize a del­e­ga­tion to par­tic­i­pate in Olive Japan in Tokyo, geared toward busi­nesses and con­sumers.

The fol­low­ing month, the cen­ter will bring a del­e­ga­tion to par­tic­i­pate in Food & Beverage West Africa in Lagos, Nigeria. Other events have been sched­uled through­out the year.

CEPEX’s pro­mo­tion strat­egy comes Tunisian exporters enjoyed an excel­lent return dur­ing the 2023/24 crop year.

Data from the National Observatory on Agriculture (Onagri) showed that export rev­enue in the last ten months of 2023/24 rose to $1.5 (€1.44) bil­lion, a 62-per­cent increase com­pared to the same period of the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

Onagri attrib­uted the increased rev­enue to a slight rise in the vol­ume exported and the sig­nif­i­cant jumps in olive oil prices at ori­gin.

While prices have fallen sig­nif­i­cantly since the end of the 2023/24 crop year in September, export vol­umes will likely rise again in 2024/25. The Tunisian agri­cul­ture min­istry esti­mated pro­duc­tion to reach 340,000 met­ric tons in the cur­rent cam­paign.

“Tunisia’s olive oil sal­va­tion lies in the very favor­able prospects for olive oil con­sump­tion, which could reach, accord­ing to some export mar­ket assess­ments, €30 bil­lion by 2030,” Salem Fourati, the vice pres­i­dent of the Tunis-based International Studies Association, wrote in Kapitalis.

Fourati, orig­i­nally from the olive oil-soaked region of Sfax, high­lighted how the sus­tained effort to pro­mote Tunisian olive oil has resulted in indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged olive oil climb­ing to 15 per­cent of total exports from five per­cent in the 2022/23 crop year.

For his part, Ben Hassin is opti­mistic that the CEPEX cam­paign move the dial for Tunisian exports and believes this will help cre­ate more job oppor­tu­ni­ties in the olive oil sec­tor.

“We believe that our com­pre­hen­sive pro­mo­tion pro­gram will sig­nif­i­cantly enhance the vis­i­bil­ity of Tunisian olive oil on the global stage,” Ben Hassin said. ​“Our goal is to increase exports and high­light the rich her­itage and supe­rior qual­ity of our prod­ucts.”

• African Manager
• Kapitalis