Juan Valdez launches in Brazil

Premium Colombian coffee brand Juan Valdez has reached the Brazilian market as part of its international expansion strategy. Starting in November 2016, Juan Valdez products will be available in 108 Pão de Açúcar stores. The strategy aims to reach up to 2100 sales 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 2181 stores located throughout Brazil, GPA is the country's largest retailer. In order to captivate Brazilian consumers, the product portfolio that will be offered consists of 100 per cent Colombian origin coffees from the regions of Huila, Tolima and Sierra Nevada. Each of these origins will come in a variety of cup profiles. “After the United States, Brazil is the world's second leading coffee consuming country,” said María Paula Moreno, International Vice President of Procafecol, the company that manages the Juan Valdez Café brand, in a statement. “It is one of the countries with the highest coffee consumption per capita in the world, with 5.1 kilograms, and it is number one in Latin America in terms of per capita. This makes Brazil an extremely attractive scenario for business expansion.”   There are currently a total of 362 Juan Valdez Cafés operating worldwide. While 224 of them are located in Colombia and 118 are located 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. Starting November 2016, Brazil will be the country with the strongest presence of Juan Valdez products in the supermarket category. 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.