Lima, Peru Team Site Visits - Agriculture 2

On Thursday, our team visited 3 companies in the agriculture and food industry in Lima, Peru.

First, we visited CPX PERU which was established in 1997 and is dedicated to the exportation of Peruvian Health Foods.  CPX is one of the market leaders in the exportation of Maca (men you may want to google this) and cat's claw derivatives.  It belongs to Cooperativa Pacifico Group, a Peruvian investment group with more than 42 years participating in different development projects in Peru. 
 

Agriculture 2 Team at CPX Peru

 

 

Paul, Karen, Peggy, Tom, Milagros Quinones (CPX Director), Christine, Rob, and Mark
 

 

Next we visited Inka Crops, a Peruvian producer of alternative snack foods from locally grown crops in Peru.  The company was founded in 2007 and has diversified itself in the snack industry by creating products like Inka Corn, a giant corn grown in the sacred valley near Cusco.  The 12,000 hectares of the sacred valley are capable of growing this giant corn every year without having to allow the soil to regenerate. 

The team ended the day visiting Austral, a fish meal and fish oil company.  Their products are used in both direct human consumption (e.g. Anchovies canned for local and export sales) and indirect human consumption (e.g. Fish meal sold to provide food for livestock).  We were hosted by Adriana Giudice Alva, CEO and Jorge Gutierrez who ran sales for the company.  They explained their business and how they work within the new quota system enacted by the Peruvian government to ensure the protection of the Bio Mass and the sustainability of the industry. 

Our site visits allowed us to get amazing insight into the challenges and opportunities of running businesses within Peru.  In each situation, we were able to see the vast amount of potential entrepreneurial and business opportunities.  While those opportunities are abundant, Peru also has many structural issues to fix such as, regulatory and legal environment, income inequality, and corruption.  

Overall, an incredible day seeing an amazing city in South America.

Tom