100% Tunisian: the North African olive oil lands on the web

Aggressive marketing, also via internet. The goal is to catch the attention of the American consumers showing the Tunisia as a strong producer country, with a valuable oil, pursuant the international quality standards

by Duccio Morozzo della Rocca

The US Hamman Marketing Associates Program recently launched the web site “100% Tunisian Olive Oil”; this initiative is one of the long term development projects on olive oil created by the Tunisian government.

The web site will promote the characteristics and the quality of the Tunisian olive oil on the US market, by presenting the buying possibilities, the positive effects on wellbeing, a copious number of exporters and producers, receipts and many general information.

As the promoter of the initiative Al Hammam declared: “Through this website we want to catch the attention of the American consumers showing the Tunisia as a strong producer country, widening in this way the opportunities already offered in the context of the 100% Tunisia project”.

As a matter of fact, Tunisia opened some years ago a fund for the promotion of the Tunisian olive oil which is assigned to all the producers and the exporters that wish to improve their position on the international market. So, some uses it to renew his retailers and to push his marketing, as was done for the Moroccan and the Russian market, and some others employs it to launch new commercial brands. The fund covers the costs for the attendance to commercial fairs, for developing new commercial communication platforms, such as 100% Tunisian Olive Oil, and for exploring new markets, such as Japan, China, USA and France.

M. Adessalem Mansour, Tunisian Agriculture Minister, reaffirmed recently the interest of the country on olive oil, underlining that Tunisia, starting from the 2450 tons of oil bottled in 2008, arrived in 2009 to 5500 tons. Moreover, the fact that the 50% of the Tunisian export is destined to the Italian market, the Minister says, shows how Tunisian oil is valuable and how it is conformed to the international quality standards.

Nowadays Tunisia is the most important extra European producer country and sells most of its oil as unbottled to bottling companies abroad. This market is the 42% of the alimentary export of the country.

For this reason, through the abovementioned fund, the government is trying to reverse this trend, by improving the exportation of the bottled product. As a matter of fact, the bottled sell is at the moment the 2% only of the total market, but, according to the official previsions, it will arrive soon at the 10%.

Starting from the 5500 tons of bottled oil sold in 2009, the Tunisian government target is to reach the 12000 tons within 2012, mainly by exploiting the development of bio oils and the increase of the number of brands exported abroad.

By means of the 100% Tunisian Olive Oil project Tunisia demonstrated (definitively better than Italy) how much the exploitation of all the available communication channels is pivotal to show one’s commercial and qualitative strength to the international market. Moreover, it succeeded in something which seems impossible to Italy: to act according to few and clear rules for the economic interest of the whole industry and the whole country. Shall Italy do something like that in the future?

by Duccio Morozzo della Rocca
01 February 2010 Teatro Naturale International n. 2 Year 2

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