Monthly Archives: January 2024

Shopping Manauara receives the company's first franchise, which plans to open another three in the first half of the year

Photo: Manawara Disclosure

Manaus – Manawara, a company that integrates the impact accelerator AMAZ portfolio, opened its first franchise last weekend (20 and 21/01). Located at Shopping Manauara, in Adrianópolis, central-south area of Manaus, this will be the first of several that should be delivered this year.

The company, located in Iranduba, Amazonas, arose from a passion for gummy bears and the Amazon. It offers 22 product options, including fruit candies of different flavors, nuts and cookies. Foods such as açaí, guaraná, taperebá and cupuaçu are present in jujubes and other vegan products, free of gluten and lactose. And it plans to close the year 2024 with 15 new products. 

In its production chain, Manawara seeks to value producers from the Amazon region. The guaraná used comes from Maués, the nuts come from Assoab (Association of Farmers of Beruri), which operates in Resex Mamirauá. The starch in the cookies comes from Iranduba, the honey from Boa Vista do Ramos, the coconut flour from producers in Acre.

“For us, who are located in Amazonas, it is very significant to have a franchise here, in Manaus. Being able to take our partners – like Mr. José Tomaz, from a riverside community in Iranduba, who is our jambu supplier – to visit our point of sale, show, in concrete terms, how the raw materials they provide us are used and where the products are sold, there is no price”, defines Mércio Sena, CEO of Manawara.

The CEO of AMAZ accelerator and director of new business at Idesam, Mariano Cenamo, highlights: “It is a great pleasure to see the opening of Manawara's first unit in Manaus, at Shopping Manauara. It is a company that we believe has enormous potential to bring the face of the Amazon to Brazil and the world, but it is super important to present first-hand the products that come from Amazonian biodiversity to be valued by the Amazonians themselves. This is the first of several franchises that will be opened in Brazil during 2024.”

The company's products were already found in some points of sale in Manaus, but now they are sold at their own point, where it is possible to have access to the wide range of products offered. 

Growth

According to Mércio, in the first half of the year, three new franchises should be opened in the city of São Paulo. Two units are also planned for this year in Rio de Janeiro and one in Belo Horizonte. And Manawara is already in the final stages of negotiating four other franchised units. 

“Our intention is to promote immersion in the world of colors and flavors of the Amazon. May everyone have the possibility of imagining their Amazon through the products we offer. Inside each candy, in each box, there is a lot of care for nature and the people who live in the forest”, highlights the CEO of Manawara.

According to him, the point of sale opened in São Paulo in May last year, which also works as show room to attract future franchisees, it has increased its sales by around 10% since the beginning of its operation.

The company has invested in product and packaging development over the last few years.

The effort has been awarded with important recognitions. The company has participated in the largest food and beverage fairs in the world and Europe – Anuga and Sial. For Sial, it won the Seal of Innovation in 2020. And it was also awarded by the Brazil Design Awards with the packaging developed for fruit candies, also in 2020.

Manawara is in negotiations to enter the North American market. Its products have also aroused interest in the Chinese market: JD, an e-commerce giant, the Chinese Department of Commerce and a supermarket chain in Beijing with foreign clientele have shown interest in opening negotiations.

Photo: Tucum Disclosure

Casa Tucum already has an address to call its own: Rua do Rosário nº 30. 

The company signed a contract with the City of Rio de Janeiro to occupy a mansion in the historic center of the city. And it is expected to start operating this quarter.

Casa represents Tucum's physical return to the capital of Rio de Janeiro, where the business managed its own store between 2013 and 2019.

To make the space viable, Tucum participated in a selection process of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall's Reviver Centro Cultural Incentive Program, which selected projects to occupy 27 empty stores in the city center, in the quadrangle formed by Avenidas Presidente Vargas, Rio Branco and First of March; along Rua da Assembleia and along a stretch of Orla Conde.

The signing ceremony took place on January 30th, in the city center of Rio de Janeiro, and was attended by Mayor Eduardo Paes and other representatives from the city hall and the companies selected to sign the Program's first contracts. 

“Casa Tucum will be a space for people to get closer to the reality and culture of our partners”, highlights Amanda Santana. “It will be a space to reaffirm the arts and indigenous peoples of Brazil.”

The purpose of the space is to sell indigenous art and crafts, but also to be a gallery for exhibiting resident artists and those from the collection, a film club and offering other cultural programs.

Photo: ACAE Disclosure

In August, students from Harvard University will be in the Amazon in an immersion organized by Academia Amazônia Ensina (ACAE). 

THE Harvard Amazon Rainforest Immersion is an extracurricular field program that involves students, teachers and researchers from Harvard and the Amazon. The program's content revolves around local themes linked to climate and sustainable development. 

The immersion will bring an intensive and interdisciplinary introduction to the ecosystems, societies and economies of the Amazon, exploring the complexities and local challenges of sustainable development.

Participants will have contact with fundamental scientific concepts to understand the functioning of the forest ecosystem and its importance for the planet; interconnections between deforestation, illegal extractive activities, loss of biodiversity, health, human capital and inequalities; local cultures; climate policy; local research, innovations and success stories. 

Lectures, debates, visits to different places, interactions with experts, traditional communities and other students will be part of the 12 days of immersion. Participants must develop a report with learnings and ideas for projects related to the Amazon. 

In addition to Harvard students, students or researchers residing in Amazon countries will also participate in the expedition.

“We were approached by Harvard, based on a recommendation from Idesam, and we were very happy, because there is a lot of synergy between what Academia Amazônia Ensina promotes and their expectations. We will pass through Manaus, the Uatumã Reserve and Presidente Figueiredo. We are very excited and in the preparatory process for the immersion”, analyzes Maria Eugenia Rocha Tezza, executive director of ACAE.

The Harvard Immersion in the Amazon Rainforest is offered by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Brazil Office and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, in collaboration with Academia Amazônia Ensina, Universidade do Estado do Amazonas (UEA) and Idesam. 

“We are sure that the sustainable production experiences offered by Idesam together with Amazon communities for the Harvard group and Academia Amazônia Ensina will allow for a different reflection on how to think about development for the Amazon. The union of these entities – a renowned research institute like Harvard, ACAE with its education in the field, reflective and instigating solutions, and the techniques developed at Idesam, in the field, together with community experience – is a very promising to see new solutions for sustainable and inclusive development in the Amazon forest”, analyzes Carlos Koury, director of innovation in bioeconomy at Idesam.

ACAE promotes four expeditions in 2024

With one expedition underway until the beginning of February, ACAE will promote three more expeditions throughout 2024, including the immersion with Harvard.

In the first expedition of the year, 23 people with very varied profiles are on board, including students and executives from institutions such as Amazon, Basf and Sebrae Nacional.

“These are people who think outside the box, or who try to think outside the box. We also have journalists, designers, administrators, engineers, audiovisual professionals and technology specialists on this expedition”, says Maria Eugênia. 

Among the year's expeditions, in May ACAE promotes an immersion with the Saint Paul Escola de Negócios de São Paulo, aimed at discovering the Amazon with an ESG perspective, and in June repeats partnership with Aberje (Brazilian Business Communication Association) in a new expedition. 

“We are very happy with the path ACAE has taken. We realize the importance of being in these different environments for dialogue to take place. I feel that Academia Amazônia Ensina is doing its role, which has always been proposed, which is to prepare people for the economic, social and ecological challenges of the 21st century. And we are very excited about this opening, especially with the B2B and corporate public, for understand the Amazon in this contextualized way”, he highlights.