Spice Council team visits USA to expand market

SPICES: The Spice Council (TSC) has been working in the past two years, to elevate the global awareness of Sri Lankan spices and to re-establish "Ceylon Spices" as a recognised brand in the world market, organised a visit of a delegation representing TSC to New York, Balstimore and New Jersey from October 4 - 11, 2006.

The visit to the US was a great success. TSC, under its market development activities planed this market expansion program to promote high quality Sri Lankan spices with the brand 'Ceylon Spices' to specialty nitch markets in the US, by capitalising on the high intrinsic qualities of our spices., cinnamon, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cardamoms, organic spices, essential oils and organic essential oils.

This visit was following up on the first visit of six members of TSC to New York and Los Angeles in March 2006 which was also a tremendous success.

The Follow up visit was organised to strengthen the contacts made during the first visit and also to meet new buyers. TSC initiative was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Competitiveness Programme (TCP).

The delegation visited the Natural Products Expo East Show in Baltimore, where they made potential business contacts.

They also visited many specialty and gourmet food stores in the Baltimore area. The participants were able to get an exposure to the type of display, packaging, labeling and pricing.