After participating in the March 2009, Food Export-Northeast-sponsored, Seafood Buyers Mission at the International Boston Seafood Show, Seafreeze Ltd. of Kingstown, Rhode Island, in the 2nd Congressional District landed a new sale to Dubai for three containers of their seafood products valued at $100,000 as well as a sale to Russia valued at $80,000. This marked the company’s first-time export sale to Dubai. Buyers Missions afford U.S. suppliers the opportunity to meet one-on-one with pre-qualified international buyers interested in their products to generate export sales.

The company has taken advantage of Branded Program to help offset the cost of attending international tradeshows. The Branded Program is funded through the Market Access Program and administered by Food Export-Northeast. It provides reimbursement of 50 percent of many international promotional costs to help small companies increase their export of U.S. agricultural products. According to James Barbera, Sales Representative for Seafreeze, “The Branded Program helps us stretch our marketing dollars to be able to attend more international tradeshows like the European Seafood Expo. Over the years we’ve added new sales to many eastern European countries as a result of attending the tradeshow.” In the last five years, the company has added four plant employees and one new sales person as a result of increased export sales.

Seafreeze, Ltd. is a producer of sea frozen fish on the U.S. east coast, supplying sea frozen and land frozen fish to a world-wide range of markets. Their HACCP-certified trawlers target underutilized species, such as Illex Squid, Loligo Squid, Atlantic Mackerel, Atlantic Butterfish and Atlantic Herring.

Food Export-Midwest and Food Export-Northeast are private, non-profit associations of Midwestern and Northeastern state agricultural promotion agencies that use federal, state, and industry resources to promote the export of Midwestern and Northeastern food and agricultural products. Food Export-Midwest and Food Export-Northeast administer many services through Market Access Program (MAP) funding from the USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service.