Gourmet Pressure on India
- March 4th, 2007
- Posted by EUA Editor
The latest installment in the European trade-and-commerce courtship of India is a large-scale mission to promote high quality food items.
With an economic trade boom comes a business elite eager to taste some of the fruits, and other delicacies of success.
That is the thinking behind next week’s (4-10.3.07) so-called “Tasty Europe” trade mission to Delhi and Mumbai, headed by the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, with a retinue of business heads from the food industry.
This group of leading exectutives will be promoting, especially, Europe’s 800 famous regional names, where labels such as Parma ham, Roquefort cheese or Champagne are meant to carry connotations of best quality.
They’re being marketed under the generic “Tasty Europe” label.
All told the travel group represents food and drink companies with combined turn-over of EU54-billion p.a (A$91-billion, dcerates.com), wanting to extend the place of Europe as India’s main trading partner – total bilateral exchanges so far running at EU40–billion p.a. (A$67.5-billion).
Leaving aside such enduring consideratioins as attachment to an already-celebrated national cuisine, and the reservations about alcohol in India, European Commission officials say the expanding Indian market is making ample room for new-arrivals on the culinary scene -including their own best offerings in quality foodstuffs, wine and spirits.
FOOTNOTE: While the present India project is under way European Commissioners will be meeting as a formal “college” to discuss relations, and possibilities, in China – the other “tiger” economy presently much on the mind of Euro-businesses.