Grupo Bongiovanni is an SME with 30 years' experience in the market. It was born as a cereal grain storage enterprise which branched out to farming, and six years ago — the result of a search for added value — it created Nutribon, a brand of balanced foods for pets. It was with that brand that the company developed its industrial line of balanced foods, and after penetrating the domestic market little by little, it now has 90 distributors in the country.

These days Grupo Bongiovanni is loading its first truck for export to Paraguay. This is the result of a process the company went through together with ProCórdoba, as part of the  Business Intelligence Program.

Technical & Commercial Information Manager Ezequiel Lijtinstens referred to the company's achievement and said,

The Business Intelligence Program consists in accompanying the company in its internationalization process to identify potential markets and clients. We train the company in technical aspects mainly, but also help them with the commercial facet, to identify clients and potential buyers."

Grupo Bongiovanni's Managing Partner Silvana Bongiovanni reminisced about their history with our Agency:

"We established a contact with ProCórdoba at an event in Villa María and then formed a group with other companies that produce animal feed and a coordinator from ProCórdoba, who later on began to prepare us separately from the group, because pet food has its own peculiarities. The Agency then started a diagnostic process, and subsequently moved on to helping us with pricing aspects and other factors that need to be considered for export."

Prior to working with ProCórdoba, the company had already exported products to Uruguay, but these days its loading its first truck with a mix of Nutribon Plus foods (standard) and Nutribon XQ foods (premium), and this, for all those who make up Grupo Bongiovanni, is huge milestone.

As Operations Manager Jorge Dianda put it,

This time we feel things are more ‘complete'. We now have all our bases covered and we have worked more efficiently, and that is where ProCórdoba made a difference. With ProCórdoba you feel someone is watching your back, because you have people that provide support and guidance in the face of the challenges that spring up. And this help is only a phone call away.

Bongiovanni added,

Whereas that first export to Uruguay was more of a ‘trial", now we have all the technical know‑how ProCórdoba's given us to help us prepare the logistics."

This milestone in the history of the firm is the fruit of hard work done together with the Agency. In this respect, Lijtinstens highlighted that

It's important to acknowledge the company's commitmentthroughout the whole process, their willingness to accept suggestions and the conjoint and collaborative efforts done in the market, all of which now allows us to speak of a success story."

As a conclusion, Bongiovanni shared a final reflection about her work with the Agency and about the SMEs' market:

For us, a small company ‘from the interior of the interior of the Province,' it is just remarkable to know that there's governmental support that brings structure to projects and processes. And ProCórdoba is that support both for the more ‘basic' things such as providing help with administrative issues or conducting a diagnosis of our business to find whether we were at a good position to export, and for what's most important: going out into the world with professional support, an organized agenda, and knowing what to show and how to do it."

Dionda, finally, sent out an invitation to other SMEs:

"We are very grateful, and we want to encourage other small businesses to go and get ProCórdoba's support without delay."