Wanis Trade Day Cooks Up Success for U.S. Rice

Wanis Trade Day 2018, promotion table with rice samples and rice packages on a palletLONDON, ENGLAND – The United Kingdom is a continuing and growing success story for U.S. rice thanks to creative promotions and valuable partnerships with brands and retailers here.  Both were on display recently during a twice annual Trade Day event at wholesaler Wanis.

Wanis is a leading wholesaler of quality foods from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Far East, and U.S.-grown rice is popular with their customers for consistency and cooking quality.  

USA Rice was on hand at the most recent Trade Day to promote two U.S. rice brands, Peacock Easy Cook Rice from S&B Herba Foods and the Wanis store brand called Tropical Sun.

“These Trade Day promotions provide exposure opportunities for our brand in this competitive sector,” said S&B Herba Foods Sales Manager Peter Walker.  “And this particular event was so successful we had to supply additional stock to cover the all the orders we took.”
 
Caribbean Chef Gayle Love, a crowd favorite with Wanis’ 3,000+ customers, cooked a variety of dishes with both brands of U.S.-grown rice.

“The product samples prepared, cooked, and served by Chef Love were the perfect way to demonstrate the taste, quality, and consistency of our Tropical Sun Easy Cook rice,” said Jagdeep Singh, marketing manager at Wanis.

While U.S. rice exports to the UK have been increasing steadily over the last several years, there is growing concern amid uncertainty in the region.  Many analysts believed Brexit, the UK departing the European Union, would present good opportunities for U.S. rice as the soon-to-be-independent UK is a loyal customer while keeping existing rice import quotas with the remaining EU would provide continuing access to the Continent.  However the brewing trade dispute between the U.S. and the EU over steel and aluminum could see a retaliatory 25 percent tariff on all U.S. milled and broken rice, including parboiled, destined for Europe.

USA Rice is participating in meetings today of the Association for the Administration of Rice Quotas where this and other topics will be covered.