Citadelle showcases its cooperative difference to win over the world’s food coops.

CAPTION: Martin Plante, Citadelle Director of Sales, with Charles Gould, Director-General of the International Co-operative Alliance.

Last December 8 to 10, Citadelle set up its kiosk in Bangalore, India for an international trade show exclusively for cooperatives. An initiative of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA), Expo Co-op was first held in 2008 in Portugal with the goal of promoting cooperative trade and to provide a window on cooperative organizations. Originating all over the world, participating coops can build awareness of their products among professionals in the business, discuss their individual situations and develop business connections with each other. Among participants in 2010 were over 120 coops from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, mostly from the food sector, including the Co-operative Group, one of the world’s biggest consumer cooperatives with 6 million members.

Interviewed upon his return, Martin Plante, Citadelle’s director of sales, says he was quite pleased with this first experience. “The show was everything we expected. So much so, we’ve already booked our space for the next exposition – 2012 in Manchester England!”

In addition to exposing a large number of visitors and exhibitors from all over the world to maple syrup, Citadelle’s representative was able to meet several potential business partners in person as well as promote an initiative he holds close to his heart. 

Affirming our cooperative difference

Citadelle’s first foray into the exposition field happened to fit with one of its underlying strategies, namely to conquer cooperative markets by promoting the cooperative difference.

“Food coops serve 100 million families world wide,” says Plante.  “We took advantage of this opportunity to talk about the cooperative and reach these customers.” 

Citadelle’s presence at the show also stems from the much broader goal of contributing to the development of coop-to-coop business on a global scale,” confides Plante, who had the opportunity to have a long conversation on the subject with the ICA’s new Director-General, Charles Gould.

Plante’s  recent trip to India only served to intensify his fervour to the concept of co-operative identification through the 100% coop seal. Invited off the cuff to present this subject during the Expo Co-op, he elicited enormous interest from an audience essentially made up of representatives of the International Cooperative Alliance’s Asia-Pacific sector. “The ICA needs concrete achievements to demonstrate the dynamism of inter-cooperative commerce,” he says with enthusiasm.  “The success of our strategy among food cooperatives would be a lovely example.”

But his bigger dream is to see the day where grocery stores would have a cooperative food section, at least in food cooperatives, like those that already exist for fair trade foods. With less than a year before the international year of the cooperative, one can only dream of the day...