Executives from InvestChile’s Investment Attraction area held meetings with eight companies from the agribusiness sector in six US cities.

InvestChile has conducted a four-day tour of California, United States with the main objective of promoting investment opportunities in Chile’s food industry and to visit the head offices of companies already established in the country. Agency executives met with representatives of eight companies based in California in the cities of San Francisco, Monterey, Sacramento, Davis, Los Angeles and Torrance.

The head of Investor Services and Aftercare at InvestChile, Vanessa Séverin, emphasized that in accordance with the agribusiness investment promotion strategy the meetings focused on four main pillars: intelligent primary production, in other words the use of technology to optimize productive processes; adding value for sophistication and differentiation (functional foods, ingredients, product transformation technology); packaging and wrapping; and knowledge generation and new varieties (R&D&I).

“We seek to bring to Chile quality investment for the food industry, which adds value to our primary resources and has innovative processes,” said Séverin, underlining the importance of strengthening technologies that enable the production of sophisticated food and which contribute to diversify our production matrix.

The inquiries from potential investors focused on the characteristics and strengths of Chile, such as the comparative advantages of emblematic food production, as well as free trade agreements, connectivity and logistics. In addition, they were given information on the services provided by InvestChile to help companies establish themselves in the country.

At the moment, Californian companies such as Driscoll’s and Dole are already present in Chile. So too is the center of excellence UC Davis which, as a result of an invitation from the Chilean government through its economic development agency CORFO, established its Life Sciences Innovation Center in Chile focused on the needs of the agribusiness sector.

It is worth noting that the government launched yesterday a program to promote Chile as a leader in the export of innovative healthy food. This initiative seeks to duplicate by 2025 food industry exports and position Chile as a leader in this market.

The food industry is Chile’s second largest export sector, after mining, surpassing US$18,000 million a year, with the aim of growing to US$$32,000 million. The sector also provides more than 23 million jobs, representing 23% of the national total.

Located on the southeast coast of the United States, California is the country’s most populated state with 39 million inhabitants. With a GDP of over US$1.8 billion, it represents 13% of the national product and considers itself as one of the seven largest global economies. California is also the fifth largest supplier of food and agricultural products in the world.