A trade mission comprising of Fijian exporters is expected to travel to New Zealand come February or March next year.

This will be done in partnership between the Pacific Trade and Invest (PT&I) from Auckland and the Fiji Export Council.

It is in a bid to build more export capability and knowledge for Fijian exporters in New Zealand markets.

Around 40 Fijian business owners and SMEs, who are potential and existing exporters, were part of the second series of workshops of the 2016 Path to Market (P2M) programme at the Tanoa Plaza Hotel in Suva on Thursday.

The workshop participants were accompanied by a delegation of close to 24 people including a three-member team of PT&I NZ and a seasoned trade consultant here as part of a business mission.

The Business Mission was organised by the New Zealand Fiji Business Council.

PT&I Trade Commissioner, Michael Greenslade, said their ultimate goal was to take a trade mission from this group of Fijian companies to New Zealand.

“It’s part of our visit this week. We also met with the companies that went on a trade mission earlier in March with us and we’re just checking with them in terms of their sales and the support they require from us in market,” he said.

“Those companies have all made sales from the previous missions.”

Mr Greenslade said the trade mission would need to consist of export-capable companies with a product and with a potential to take an order.

“Last year was the first time we trialled it. Six came over for the trade mission. And we had four countries come together to New Zealand which included Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Samoa,” he said.

“This year we are lucky to have eight countries. So we are going to have a good number of exporters come and to be fair, the real opportunity is within that group of companies.”

Change of perspective

Kava exporter Praveen Narayan, who is the managing director of Green Gold Kava, said the P2M workshop was a once in a lifetime workshop.

“This workshop really changed my perspective as a small exporter now to gaining more exposure overseas,” he said.

Mr Narayan said he was lucky to be part of the team that went to the Pasifika Festival in Auckland in March this year.

“There we did really great. My company managed to get a very good distributor in NZ,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fiji Export Council chief executive officer Jone Cavubati said the P2M workshop was timely and quite relevant.

“The Fiji Export Council continues to receive a lot of enquiries from people aspiring to export but they are not ready,” he said.

“This type of workshop is really how we can assess the business development and that they are aware of how to export.

“We are targeting potential exporters, new exporters and we have the matured exporters and hope that they can learn from each other.”

The PT&I is the economic development agency of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat engaged in trade and investment promotion in Pacific Island Forum countries.

Source: Fiji SunOnline