European food industry gets e-marketplace

NEWS A one-stop trading and services global marketplace aimed at the European food industry, efoodmanager.com has been launched to supply retailers, processors, food service companies, bulk buyers, wholesalers, and traders with the ability to interact online and in real time. efoodmanager gives buyers quick and simple information retrieval, a rapid transaction process and individual statistical tools such as sales reports and trend analyses. Sellers will have access to a large buyer market, payment security, and speed of time to market. Fruits, vegetables and seafood are the initial target of the site and there are plans to add meat, poultry, deli and daily products. efoodmanager also plans to launch additional marketplaces for beverages and soft commodities such as grains and ingredients. Jan Stenger, co-founder and managing director of efoodmanager.com, says European buyers can efficiently access the international food industry and cut process and product costs by up to 25 per cent."Our goal is to totally integrate value added services with the trading processes so as to deliver the best value," Stenger said. efoodmanager.com is made up of three areas. The first two are the Open Market - where buyers and sellers can trade openly between themselves - and the Individual Company Marketplace - where companies trade only with selected partner companies by catalogue. In the Services area, buyers and sellers have access to insurance, financial services, business directories and logistic services provided by companies such as Danzas and Nagel Airfreight. More than 900 companies have registered for the Open Market, including Deutsche See, LeShop, Furic Maree and Andretta and 500 companies are trading on the company marketplace. The marketplaces will be accessible in English and German and will later include French, Italian and Spanish. Although free to join, the company plans to charge small transaction fees for every trade processed through the marketplaces beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.