With demand rising in the Asian markets for quality Danish organic products, Ronni Sørensen created Green Gourmet, a trading company which enabled small companies, who would have otherwise had difficulties making into markets such as Japan and Taiwan, to make their way into these markets.
Although the trading company offers a variety of products, Ronni's thoughts went back to his roots, which is kale, and he worked on developing a product that would also fit into these markets. As CEO of Vendsysselske Grønlangkål, his family has been in to the business of producing frozen kale for supermarkets for the past 35 years. Kale is a very popular traditional product in Denmark and is seen as a 'must have' on every Christmas table.
"With my family's history with green kale, I couldn't get it off of my mind, but it was something completely unknown to the Asian market. What ended up catching their attention was the health benefits. Two years after our entry into the market with Green Gourmet, we started making organic freeze dried kale powder which we sold business to business. We made a state of the art product, where the product does not get any hotter than 42 degrees, which ensures that it keeps all of its super food benefits. With only 4 grams of the kale powder, consumers get enough vitamins and minerals to keep them going the whole day." shared Ronni.
Demand for kale continues to grow and the company is currently active in Sweden, Norway and Japan, Taiwan and England.
"The most important thing with this type of product is to get out there and make sure that customers know the whole story, it is not a product that sells itself. We have been really active on social media. We use LinkedIn to reach the European markets, but we have learned that this site is virtually unknown in Asia, where Facebook is more popular. We also hired a man in Japan who is an expert in social media and we have made sure to let people know that, not only can we share all of the information about how great the product is for you, but we can actually prove what we are saying with documentation." said Ronni.
Green Gourmet offers both kale powder and granules, most often to food companies to make their processed food more healthy, but it is also used in smoothies as well as a vitamin boost. The cosmetic industry has also shown interest, where it is used to make face masks and face creams.
The company harvests the green kale, where it is washed and processed as soon as possible, so that it can be frozen, making the product more stable. After that, it is freeze dried with the lower temperatures and is processed into either the powder or granules.
"All of the products are organic. We had offered both conventional and organic in the beginning, but we soon saw that consumers in Japan only want to see organic labels. We do not work directly with customers in China, but we do supply to other company's who work with China, so the kale powder does get to them indirectly,"
"China has everything, but the kind of kale powders that are offered there are not the superfood green kale that we produce. China is a huge market and we would love to entertain the opportunity." Ronni concluded.
