Trade builds up with Venezuela

Press, 17 February 1983, Page 26

Trade builds up with Venezuela

The New Zealand ExportImport Corporation will have secured more than S4M of export business with- Venezuela by the end of its financial year on March 31 — four times what it achieved two years ago. The coropration is optimistic there will be similar growth in the next financial year, acording to Mr William Sommerville, who has jiist returned to head office in Wellington after five years as its South American trade executive, based in Caracas.

Releasing details of trade with Venezuela in the present financial year, Mr Sommerville said that the country was now buying a range of goods from New Zealand including skins, agricultural machinery, building materials, and berryfruit.

“It has proven a difficult market to break into because of language and other barriers and considerable ground work was necessary before sales began to occur.

“But now that we’re established, there's no reason why

we can't continue to build business with this country,” Mr Sommerville said. He added that two of the keys to the successful development of the Venezuelan market were that he learned Spanish before he went there and the corporation’s association with a local company, Zander Mercantil, had markedly assisted its acceptance.

Mr Sommerville said that in the last 12 months the corporation had sold almost all of New Zealand’s goatskin production to Venezuela for manufacture of shoe uppers, and had developed a market for wooltops for yarn making. .

Milking and seeding machinery had also been well received and smaller agricultural implements, were meeting good demand. A good market had been developed for raspberries and blackberries and it was hoped that other horticultural products would be accepted soon. From its Caracas base, the corporation had developed a substantial West Indies mar-

ket for garlic and onions — so much so that part of this area now looked to the corporation for its total supply of garlic for four months of the year. Trade generally, had built up so well, particularly in Venezuela in the last five years, that the corporation now sometimes had to look to Australia to meet all the demand generated for some commodities such as goatskins and fruit pulps. It had also sold tropical seeds to Venezuela for the Australian branch of a New Zealand stock and station firm.

Mr Sommerville said an obstacle to increasing trade with Venezuela and other South American countries was the rising cost of freight. If this continued it w’ould be very difficult for New Zealand to be competitive in South American markets.

He has now taken up an appointment as the corporation’s trading division manager responsible for trade with South America, SouthEast Asia, and Australia.

A Spanish-speaking New Zealander resident in South America, Mr Michael Fitzgerald, has succeeded him as the corporation’s South American trade executive in Venezuela. Mr Fitzgerald is a former senior marketing officer with the New Zealand Embassy in Santiago, Chile.