Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero visited the cooperative made up of Maleza women, dedicated to the manufacture of natural cosmetics and which, after signing a joint agreement, will produce the handmade resins for bowed string instruments of the Yumba company, the only one in the country in its field, contributing in this way to expand the productive chain of the social economy.
Yumba -based in Bahía Blanca- was the winner of the “Export Award” in 2021 and joined the “Export Challenge” Program of the Argentine Investment and International Trade Agency (Aaici).
Maleza, for its part, is a cooperative that since 2017 has been producing natural cosmetic products, with organic ingredients and in a sustainable way.which employs 46 women, some of them from Villa 20 and Ciudad Oculta, and is committed to associativity and networking with similar enterprises.
“The Foreign Ministry accompanied the Bahía Blanca company in international fairs and business agendas, reaching new markets, which led to greater internal and external demand for its products, thus increasing its production through the association with the cooperative,” they stressed in a statement.
The tour of the Maleza cooperative, located in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Lugano, was also attended by the Secretary of International Economic Relations, Cecilia Todesca Bocco; the undersecretary for Trade and Investment Promotion, Guillermo Merediz, the president of the Argentine Investment and International Trade Agency, Juan Usandivaras; the Cooperative Coordinator, Julia Argani; and the founder of Yumba, Guillermina Esmoris.
In that framework, Cafiero stressed that it is a cooperative of the popular economy “that was associated with the company Yumba, which had been part of the export programs of the Foreign Ministry, gaining markets in more than 20 countries and today in this strategic association a synergy is generated very interesting when it comes to adding production processes, but fundamentally it adds a capacity for production scale and job creation”.
“It makes us very happy that part of the Export Promotion programs, of seed capital that the Ministry did with this company, has this expansion towards a work cooperative and to continue exporting,” added the foreign minister.
For its part, the head of Yumba, pointed out that “this year the brand experienced great growth thanks to exports with the contribution of some programs of the Argentine Foreign Ministry and I saw the need to rethink productionso listening to an interview with members of this cooperative, it seemed like a very interesting project to me and I decided to contact them and propose the production of resins”.
“Right now we produce together and export to more than 20 countries,” added Esmoris.
Yumba already sells its resins in the United States, Canada, Norway, Austria and Australia, among other destinations.
This year it also managed to enter Mexico, Brazil and Chile with its product and is preparing orders for Japan and France.
