As USSEC Europe/Middle East North Africa (MENA) celebrates its next Regional Soy Trade Exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, many European customers still look back at their participation at USSEC’s U.S. Soy Global Trade Exchange held in Chicago last summer. The team of North-East European customers still recalls their face-to-face encounters with the U.S. soy industry in Chicago in August of this year and continues benefiting from the knowledge and contacts gathered there.
This year’s GTE was truly the premier global soy and grain trade event of the year. As they do every year, U.S. soy and grain industry stakeholders, international buyers, exporters, growers and many more attended the GTE to build relationships, share knowledge, do business, and make new friends. USSEC brought many from the EU and MENA regions, including a group from the North-East Europe (NEE) sub-region, namely Poles and Czechs led by Jerzy W. Kosieradzki, USSEC NEE Technical Director based in Warsaw, Poland.
Due to African Swine Fever (ASF) considerations, the NEE team did not attend the field visits but joined customers from other countries for the Soy Market Outlook Seminar run by INTL FCStone company, which was a valuable event. Mr. Ammermann, a highly recognized speaker in Poland and neighboring countries, led the mini-seminar.
At the Trade Team Invitational (TTI) the delegation had meetings with a few companies, including Gavilon, who was not present at the NEE meeting last year. Everyone was interested in the inspection of non-GM commodities explained by SGS people and followed up with many comments and questions.
The GTE itself was highly appreciated by NEE participants, especially the presentations on “World Agriculture Supply & Demand” and “Communication Evolution” held in the main conference hall. The NEE participants eagerly attended USSEC breakout sessions to learn more about U.S. Soy and the industry’s sustainability, finding them interesting and useful.
Like all Europeans, the Polish and Czech participants spent a considerable amount of time at the trade show, meeting with a multitude of companies and organizations, including state soybean associations, soy crushers and processors, soy exporters, agricultural and trade information and services companies, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) representatives, state and private inspection services, feed and food ingredient companies, feed industry software reps, and others.
Mr. Kosieradzki added that in Chicago he personally managed to meet with a large number of his USSEC colleagues from Europe, MENA, the Americas, and Asia, which he always finds very important and useful for his teamwork.
And now at the beginning of window of opportunity for U.S. Soy in the European market, USSEC wants to build upon the GTE efforts providing these customers and many others with the first hand information on U.S. Soy industry’s trade offer for the current season.