During the International Food Fair, which is held in Paris, many small and medium -sized enterprises in France aspire to find new customers and increase the share of their sales abroad.
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Danone is absent subscribers. But the big French industrialists in the sector -the laitis dairy giant, specialists in Bigard or LDC meat and weight cooperatives like Sodiaal or Tereos -they will be present at SIAL, a global meeting of the food industry, which opens Its doors, Saturday October 15, in Paris-Nord-Villepinte. Above all, many French SMEs will make the trip. The challenge: find new customers and develop the share of export in their sales.
It is true that, in the French agrifood fabric, the disparities are strong. According to the National Association of Agrifood Industries (Ania), SMEs achieve an average of 18 % of their turnover outside the borders, when this ratio reaches 40 % for intermediate -sized companies and large groups. Even more striking, the twenty-three French heavy goods vehicles represent more than half of the hexagonal exports.
Their efforts weigh heavy in the balance of national foreign trade. The food industry signed the third trade surplus in 2021, with 8.5 billion euros, against 6.1 billion euros in 2020. Obviously, wines and spirits are in good place. Cognacs, champagnes and French wines tear everywhere on the planet. The flow of their exports reached a historic level in 2021, at 15.5 billion euros.
All these products rely on the link to the terroir, with signs of quality such as names of controlled origin, wages of valuation and protection. The balance is also surplus for milk and dairy products, whose sales out of borders amounted to 7.6 billion euros in 2021.
However, sorrowful spirits deplore France’s demotion to the rank of fifth world exporter behind China, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, while it was second place in 2005. According to Ania, excluding wines and spirits, the market share of the tricolor food industry has increased, in twenty years, from 8 % to 4.8 %.
It however claims the status of the country’s first industry in terms of turnover, with a total estimated at 198 billion euros for 2022. An activity distributed throughout the territory, with a number of companies which believed 957 in 2021, to reach 16,436. On this set, 98 % are SMEs, and 81 % have less than ten employees. These companies recruit, even if they are also penalized by a lack of attractiveness. The ranks of their employees have further expanded by 2,968 positions this year, for a total of 436,547 jobs.