For more than 90 years, the Keyaniyan Company has specialized in the business of high-quality nuts, dried fruits and baking seeds. Keyaniyan’s personal contact with its suppliers enables the company to guarantee the very highest quality standards to its customers in the confectionery industry, bakery wholesale sector and other food segments.

By Alfons Strohmaier

The ancient Silk Road indicates just how much cities and countries have achieved prosperity through trading in goods and agricultural products. The Silk Road was the most important trading route between Europe and China throughout antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Many of the farming nations from which the Hamburg-based Keyaniyan Company procures its agricultural raw materials are located along this route. Behnam Keyaniyan represents the third generation of his family to run the tradition-rich company. He explains: “We procure our goods from 33 countries around the world, stretching from Turkey to California and China, covering all of the relevant origins for each of our products, even from exotic places like Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan”.

In 1928, Reza and Hassan Keyaniyan along with Taghi Tabarrok founded the Keyaniyan Company with branch offices in Hamburg, Tabriz and Teheran. Following the turmoil of the Second World War, Hussein Keyaniyan founded his own company and concentrated from that point forward increasingly on the import of dried fruits and nuts. Since 1985, his son Behnam Keyaniyan has guided the company, meanwhile supplying agricultural products including nuts, dried fruits and baking seeds to customers on the European market.

An important turning point in the company’s early history came with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of the former communist Eastern Bloc countries for the market economy. Keyaniyan was able to intensify existing business contacts and build new ones, enabling the company to develop alternative sources of acquisition. Examples of this include the cultivation and procurement of poppy seeds from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, almonds from Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan, hazelnuts from Georgia and Azerbaijan, walnuts from Moldova, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Kirgizia, and sunflower seeds from Bulgaria.

Over the last 35 years, Mr Keyaniyan has continuously built up and expanded a sustainable supplier network on the basis of friendship and partnership. On-site visits to the suppliers on a regular basis are part and parcel of this arrangement. For generations, the name Keyaniyan has stood for the Persian merchant tradition and international trade with food product raw materials, so Mr Keyaniyan has carried these cosmopolitan origins with him practically since birth. With his family, cultural and social background he is a world traveller who is comfortable in a variety of cultural environments.

“Absolutely everything is based on respect and appreciation of the business partners, their experience and their performance, especially in countries with difficult political and economic conditions,” explains the company owner. “In addition, one needs to develop a keen sense of the appropriate manners and phrasing, for instance in making demands. It is helpful that I speak Persian, Turkish, French and English and thus have a good command of the local language in eight to nine countries of origin from which we obtain our products”. Based on the close contacts with suppliers, Keyaniyan can offer its customers exactly the products in certified quality at the required delivery times.

The company’s approach is to focus on relatively few raw materials. “Along with a manageable core portfolio, we also operate in niches serving only a few customers”, Mr Keyaniyan explains. The portfolio consists of 17 products from the nuts segment, ranging from sweet and bitter almonds to hazelnuts, walnuts, apricot seeds and pistachios, coconuts, dried fruits (apricots, figs, raisins and dried plums), and baking seeds such as poppy seeds, sesame seeds, linseeds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. The company can also supply the entire product portfolio in organic quality, although trading in organic products is not one of the operation’s core businesses at present.

The top sellers in the product range are sweet and bitter almonds along with hazelnuts. Sweet almonds are procured primarily from California and Spain, with Syria, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan serving as alternative sources. The Keyaniyan bitter almonds are principally supplied by Syria and Morocco, and alternatively from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Turkey, while hazelnuts are sourced from Turkey and alternatively from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Spain.

As an IFS broker-certified company, traceability is an important issue for Keyaniyan. Every year, the company is obligated to conduct downstream tracing, from the producer to the consumer, and upstream tracing, from the consumer to the producer, as well as to carry out a simulated recall test. In comparison with the relatively manageable relations with suppliers from EU countries and non-EU suppliers such as California, countries where political uncertainty is sometimes an issue like Syria, Uzbekistan or Afghanistan represent the biggest challenges for this import company. “In light of these circumstances, the personal relationships that have grown over years with our suppliers and the mutual personal trust are even more important. We work with carefully selected, reliable suppliers who guarantee quality security”, says Behnam Keyaniyan. “We additionally have the goods inspected upon their arrival by an accredited laboratory using a risk-based, detailed test plan. This enables us to ensure that our products correspond with both the customers’ and the legal requirements”.

Appreciating the purchaser’s competence and reliability-consciousness even in the face of difficult political and even weather circumstances is necessary. In the confectionery industry sector, the Keyaniyan Company supplies customers in the fields of baked goods, chocolate and dragees, as well as medium-sized family companies in the premium segment that produce the raw masses for marzipan, persipan and nougat. And leading wholesale bakery operations and customers from other segments, including manufacturers of muesli and breakfast cereals along with suppliers for ice cream manufacturers, rely on the immense know-how of the company.

Keyaniyan also maintains a close, innovative partnership with processors and service providers who prepare and handle the products. All in all, Mr Keyaniyan is confident that the company is well-prepared for the challenges of the markets and the business overall with its strategy. He sums up by emphasizing: “With our natural, healthy products made from renewable raw materials, we are servicing the trend toward products with added value and a healthy focus that are sustainable and convenient”.