On July 1, 2017, Bryant Christie Inc., (BCI) a company that helps agricultural, food and beverage producers open and expand foreign markets, celebrates its 25th anniversary. BCI works with produce industry companies and associations across the country.
Bill Bryant founded W.L. Bryant Co. in his Seattle basement “with just a phone, a fax machine, and a lot of agricultural exporters who believed in me and wanted help”, said Bryant, the company’s chairman. Within a year, Bryant was joined in Seattle by James Christie who had been the president of the California Cherry Export Association. In 1996, W.L. Bryant Co. became Bryant Christie Inc. and James Christie was named its managing director. In 2002, during the company’s tenth anniversary year, Christie became the company’s president and the firm opened a Sacramento office.
Today, BCI has nearly forty employees and works on projects in 25-35 countries at any given time. It continues to help agricultural, food and beverage exporters across the United States eliminate unfair foreign trade and regulatory barriers, but the company also helps firms and associations manage their international marketing programs, provides specialized research aimed at increasing competitiveness and expanding export markets, and develops and maintains subscription-accessed on-line databases of global technical, regulatory standards.
“We want this 25th anniversary to be a time to thank the many clients who have been with us for years”, said Christie, pointing out that four of the company’s clients have been with BCI the full 25 years and a third of BCI’s clients have worked with the company for ten years or more. “And, it’s also about launching new initiatives for the future,” he added.
In 1997, BCI began developing online trade and regulatory databases. In 2000, it began developing a database of global pesticide maximum residue levels that has grown into the largest repository of comparative MRLs—information vital to agricultural exporters. In 2008, the firm began developing its food additive database.
Bryant announced that “In mid-July, as part of our 25th anniversary, BCI will launch BCGlobal, a single portal into global regulations affecting food, beverage and agricultural products”. Bryant explained that BCGlobal brings together Bryant Christie Inc.’s pesticide GlobalMRL and food additives databases. As part of the BCGlobal launch, a veterinary drug database will be added and additional databases are scheduled for 2018-19. “Exporters and even governments are coming to us with ideas for new global subscription-accessed databases that could be built. Looking forward, we’ve got lots opportunities and possibilities”, said Bryant.
BCGlobal will provide exporters with a one-stop, online regulatory resource that will help them ensure compliance with import requirements, and will broaden and deepen BCI’s footprint in the burgeoning field of Regulatory Intelligence (RI).
Source: Bryant Christie Inc.