Unfolding our success story

Today we complete three eventful years at Sun Impex. Our humble beginnings as an agro conglomerate started in 2007. Our success story prompted us to take a big leap forward and establish our presence as a Global Food Company. While contemplating on the choice of our international base location, Dubai’s strategic placement as a geographic center of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia attracted our attention. Liberal economic policies, easily convertible currency and amicable business environment made it the epicenter of global trade and we chose this City of Gold to make our debut in the international market.

Our new office at the sought after Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (DAFZA) was an anchor to our newfound hopes. In less than a month the floor captured footprints from all over the world. Our team members represented different nationalities, ethnicities, castes, creed and cultural backgrounds. We soon became a cosmopolitan powerhouse and the diversity of perspectives and life experiences that our team members offered helped us to grow as a global company with a global vision. Initially we focused on our core. Our expertise with production and export of pulp, puree, concentrate and frozen (IQF) fruits and vegetables translated well in the Gulf market. Parallel to it, we established our Nuts division. Choicest nuts from the farms in California and Australia were partly consumed by our customers in UAE and partly re-exported to other GCC countries and Europe. The growth was completely accelerated. Very soon we had a commodities division which sourced soft commodities from every fertile region on every continent. It was an enthralling feeling to see Sun Impex emerge as a consolidator and supplier of food sourced from different parts of the world, traded on diverse routes, across diverse cultures. And then it was the time for the big bang of our Horeca division. It was an unprecedented growth. Within a year’s time we scaled up our operations, importing and supplying fine food products of reputed brands to the hotels, food services, airline services and ship chandelling industries. We had a dedicated warehouse facility as well as a temperature controlled captive delivery fleet for delivering perishable, dry and frozen items right at the doorsteps of our customers. Our desire to serve as a holistic solution provider for the food, beverage and fragrance industry prompted us to venture into the flavour and fragrances segment. Our biggest enabler here was our pulp manufacturing unit at Chittoor, India. Vertical integration from the pulp business facilitated our move into our new venture and we established a state-of-the-art flavour compounding facility under the aegis of our manufacturing. The Gulf region still remains our biggest market for the flavour and fragrances segment. The story doesn’t end here. Our success story at Dubai acted as a catalyst to fuel a massive international growth. Within a span of one year, we opened up a regional office cum stock-and-sales unit at Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Ukraine, one of the world’s prime agricultural centres also had us soon. It strengthened our supply chain for oilseeds and soya based produce. Followed by Ukraine was our presence in Africa. Our delivery base in Madagascar exported African beans, vanilla and cocoa to markets across the globe. With such kind of a massive worldwide expansion, the need of strategically viable storage units, in close proximity to air and sea ports was imperative. We commenced warehouse operations in Dubai, Rotterdam and Madagascar to strengthen our base in these regions. The journey was not an easy one. We had some failures that taught us more than our success could. Our foray into the bakery, confectionery and dairy segments did not take shape as we anticipated. Managing a globally spread supply chain was always a meticulous task. The scope for an error of the smallest magnitude never existed. All of this happened at the speed of light. It was difficult for some to keep pace with it. There were many happy good byes and many new faces that touched our emotional chord. So did that farmer who works for us in every continent of the world. Positive signs on the balance sheet were as enthralling as our mandates for sustainability, traceability, fair trade and skill development. Our progress was stimulated by the audacious goals we had set when we started our journey. To our surprise, we met most of these goals well before their projected timeline. And today, just as we are on the cusp of an exponential growth trajectory, our leader, Mr. Sumant Bindal’s core ideology is to build an organization that will outlive the tenure of our leadership team and our product life cycles. We aspire making our company itself the ultimate product, for our revered customers.