The 19th Edition of AGRITRADE Expo & Conference will offer a series of activities to display Guatemala’s wide variety of agriculture exports, including vegetables, fruits, agribusiness products, ornamental flowers, among others; to more than 3,500 visitors from 23 different countries. The event will take place on March 21-23, 2019 at Santo Domingo Hotel in Antigua Guatemala.

AGRITRADE Expo & Conference is nowadays a unique business platform for agriculture products in Central America. Its 19^th edition will be unique as it includes many innovations, with more than 10 new activities planned. Among them, the first edition of Coffee Trade Guatemala with support from the “More Competitive Cooperatives and SMEs” of the European Union. This will be a live bid of world-class quality coffee. As well, AGRITRADE has already established more than 100 business meetings with buyers from different Latin American, European and Asian buyers; said Mr. Estuardo Castro, president of AGRITRADE’s Organizing Committee.

AGRITRADE will also host a special showroom with support from the European Union’s AL-Invest 5.0 program. This showroom will display the best agriculture products, packages and technology used by Guatemalan exporting firms. As well, the event will give a special award to the most innovative agriculture firm. The award will be named “Emilio Santano” in honor to the efforts made by one of the founders of the AGRITRADE event. It will also display a special pavilion for ornamental plants, with samples of proteas, snap dragons, orchids and other species.

The 2019 edition of this Expo & Conference will host three different business rounds, so that all companies on the value chain have the opportunity to make businesses with international players. One of the business rounds will take place between exporters and international brokers. Then, a round between exporters and local producers, and lastly an international business round between exporters and 150 international buyers from the United States, Spain, Taiwan, the Netherlands, England, Japan, France, Colombia and the rest of Central America. We expect businesses of more than US$65 million to be established as a result of these business rounds.

AGRITRADE has also been the scenario for the annual convention of the National Mango Board, hosting mango producers of the five main world producers of this agriculture product. Mango distributors and brokers of the United States also planned to attend, in order to define investigation and trade strategies to export mangoes to the North American country.

AGRITRADE will also have for the first time an activity called “flavors beyond expectations”, where renown Guatemalan chefs will prepare unique dishes with Guatemalan export-quality fruits and vegetables. With this, we will display the versatility of our agriculture products and how to fusion our spices with unique world-class dishes, said Mr. Castro.

This event will also have the participation of 28 small Central American agriculture firms, with support from the European Union’s program to develop private sector firms in Central America.

Lastly, AGRITRADE 2019 will also host 18 simultaneous conference on March 21^st, with world-class experts like David Schavartzan from Israel, who will give a lecture on agriculture technology; Kimihiko Inaba from Japan with a conference on current trends in Japan for agriculture exports; and Arno Van der Maden from the Netherlands who will lecture on global trends for blackberries.