13-15 April 2027
13th International Food & Drink,
Food Processing and Packaging Exhibition
EXPO XXI Warszawa, 12/14 I. Prądzyńskiego Street
13-15 April 2027
13th International Food & Drink,
Food Processing and Packaging Exhibition
EXPO XXI Warszawa, 12/14 I. Prądzyńskiego Street
EUR 58.4 billion – this was the value of Polish agri-food products sold abroad in 2025, the highest figure in history. Goods are flowing abroad in ever-increasing volumes, but this does not mean that brand recognition is growing with them. At the April WorldFood Poland exhibition, the Polish Promotional Emblem Foundation “Teraz Polska” organised a debate entitled “The Strength of Polish Food Brands at Home and Worldwide”, featuring Prof. Hanna Górska-Warsewicz from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Andrzej Gantner from the Polish Federation of Food Industry, Katarzyna Łysoń-Wiktor from Pasieka Łysoń and Piotr Borowski from the Shareholders’ Dairy Cooperative in Strzałkowo, moderated by Michał Lipiński. The conclusion they reached together was simple – today, we mainly export products and much less frequently brands.
Table of contents
🟢 Record-breaking exports
🟢 What does a strong brand really consist of?
🟢 Umbrella brand. Who is actually exporting – Poland or individual companies?
🟢 A brand is a collection of needs, not a label on a product
🟢 Authenticity in practice. The story of Pasieka Łysoń
🟢 A word-of-mouth brand. How was trust built in Strzałkowo?
🟢 What is the Polish food brand missing?
🟢 FAQ
The figures cited by Michał Lipiński at the beginning leave no doubt as to the scale of the phenomenon. In 2025, the value of Polish agri-food exports reached EUR 58.4 billion (PLN 248 billion), 8.6% more than in the previous year. The positive trade balance increased by 10.2% to EUR 19.8 billion (PLN 84 billion). As noted during the debate, this is one of the few Polish export sectors to record such a surplus at all.
Growth has also continued in 2026, although at a slower pace. According to data from the National Support Centre for Agriculture, exports reached EUR 24.1 billion (PLN 102 billion) between January and May, 1.6% more than in the corresponding period of the previous year, while the positive balance increased to EUR 7.8 billion. The European Union still accounts for 74% of sales, but exports are growing fastest outside the EU – to the Philippines (+80%), South Africa (+79%), Nigeria (+78%) and Türkiye (+61%). The main destination remains unchanged, but the geographical reach is expanding.
However, as the panellists argued, these figures are largely the result of scale and price rather than brand recognition. Prof. Górska-Warsewicz stated that a strong market position today is not based solely on sales volume. It is built through quality, trust and the ability to credibly substantiate the value delivered by the product.
Prof. Hanna Górska-Warsewicz, whose research focuses on brand equity and reputation, identified several conditions without which it is difficult to speak of a strong brand. Quality is now a basic requirement rather than a distinguishing feature, because a brand simply cannot be built without it. Other important factors include product authenticity, consumer trust and credibility, understood as fulfilling the promises made in communications.
– Trust, understood as the consumer not having been disappointed by the brand – this is how the Warsaw University of Life Sciences professor defined the mechanism.
Positive brand associations generate contentment, contentment translates into satisfaction, and satisfaction into loyalty. In the food industry, this chain now determines competitive advantage to a greater extent than price alone.
Michał Lipiński highlighted an issue affecting almost every company exhibiting abroad, namely that foreign buyers rarely distinguish one Polish brand from another, instead viewing them primarily through the country of origin. Prof. Górska-Warsewicz confirmed that this involves a hierarchy of images – the country brand, category brand, company brand and product brand overlap and can either support or undermine one another.
Andrzej Gantner took a more sceptical view. In his opinion, major Polish food groups – including Maspex and Colian – are currently developing according to a very similar model. They first establish their position in Poland, then accumulate capital, enter foreign markets and acquire local brands instead of promoting a single shared brand. This is an effective form of expansion, but it has little to do with building a recognisable national brand.
Gantner reduced the essence of the problem to a single question: what specific set of consumer needs in Germany, the Netherlands or South Korea is satisfied by the “made in Poland” label? Italian cured meats and French cheeses became umbrella brands because, centuries ago, they began with a narrow, high-quality niche and subsequently scaled that reputation. In his opinion, Poland has still not determined which specific need it should represent abroad.
Gantner’s starting point was Philip Kotler’s classic definition – a product is a collection of needs and benefits, and if it fails to meet them, it simply does not exist for the consumer. From this perspective, no brand, even the most established, is safe today. As examples, he cited the changing image of the Chinese automotive industry, Japanese whisky and the sudden success of “Wojanki” beverages, which, without a traditional advertising campaign, appealed to the aspirations of a specific target group and quickly overtook brands that had been developed for a decade.
– A brand is not really a physical object. A brand is a collection of needs – he concluded, adding that the same mechanism was responsible for the rapid success of Ekipa ice cream at the expense of established manufacturers such as Koral and Grycan.
Paradoxically, the conclusion for smaller, less recognisable Polish companies is encouraging: since even the largest brands can lose their position within a few years, smaller players can also build one within the same period, provided that they correctly identify the need they genuinely satisfy.
Katarzyna Łysoń-Wiktor explained how a family business manufacturing beekeeping equipment, established more than 30 years ago, developed into a company that now also produces honey and bee-product-based snacks and runs its own educational programmes on the role of bees. In this case, the authenticity discussed by Prof. Górska-Warsewicz is not a marketing device, but simply the company’s history.
However, Łysoń-Wiktor openly acknowledged that the story itself is not enough unless it is communicated effectively. For years, the company assumed that customers already knew who it was and what it did. Today, working with marketing agencies, it is only beginning to learn how to consciously communicate this credibility externally.
Piotr Borowski described a journey that resembles a textbook case of building a brand without an advertising budget. In the 1990s, the cooperative in Strzałkowo produced approximately 20 tonnes of quark annually; today, the figure is nearly 3,000 tonnes, sold primarily through customer recommendations and consistent online communication, managed since 2010 by a dedicated person responsible for consumer relations.
Borowski described receiving the Teraz Polska distinction three times as a tool that facilitates conversations with customers – quality confirmation granted under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland serves as external proof of credibility that an individual company would find difficult to establish independently. He also emphasised that a brand requires continuous work, because once recognition has been built, it can lose its strength just as quickly as it was gained without further product improvements and regular communication with consumers.
Summarising the debate, Michał Lipiński indicated the direction in which, in his opinion, Polish companies should move, namely seeking products that are sufficiently distinctive to be difficult for competitors to copy. He cited quark as an example. It is an everyday product that is not widely present on Western European tables but which, with the right narrative, could become a recognisable export symbol, just as Italian cured meats and French cheeses did previously.
Finally, Andrzej Gantner referred to Japanese whisky, which was unknown outside Japan just fifteen years ago and is now ranked alongside Scotch whisky. In his opinion, this demonstrates that there is no predetermined ceiling in brand building, just as there is none in developing Poland’s reputation as a food exporter. The question left by the debate is therefore not “whether”, but “which specific need” the Polish food brand is prepared to satisfy abroad.
The debate entitled “The Strength of Polish Food Brands at Home and Worldwide” took place in April 2026 as part of the conferences organised during the WorldFood Poland exhibition. It is a place where Polish food manufacturers meet business partners from around the world every year and build relationships that subsequently translate into export contracts. If your company is seeking new markets and wants to consciously build brand recognition abroad, the next edition of the exhibition is a natural place to begin or accelerate these discussions.
EUR 58.4 billion (approximately PLN 248 billion), 8.6% more than in the previous year – the highest figure in history.
In 2025, it increased by 10.2% to EUR 19.8 billion (PLN 84 billion) – this is one of the few Polish export sectors to record such a surplus.
Between January and May 2026, exports reached EUR 24.1 billion (PLN 102 billion), 1.6% more year on year, while the balance increased to EUR 7.8 billion. The growth rate is slower than in 2025.
The European Union still accounts for 74% of sales, but the most dynamic growth is being recorded in markets outside the EU: the Philippines (+80%), South Africa (+79%), Nigeria (+78%) and Türkiye (+61%).
Because this result is largely driven by sales volume and price rather than recognition. A strong market position is built today through quality, trust and credibility, not volume alone.
Quality, which is a basic requirement, authenticity, consumer trust and credibility understood as fulfilling promises. This leads to satisfaction, which in turn leads to customer loyalty.
Foreign buyers usually do not distinguish between individual Polish brands, but instead focus on the country of origin. At the same time, major groups such as Maspex and Colian expand by acquiring local brands abroad rather than promoting a single shared national brand.
According to Kotler’s definition, a product that does not satisfy the consumer’s needs simply does not exist for them. Therefore, even large, established brands can lose their position to new ones if the latter appeal more effectively to consumers’ aspirations, as demonstrated by Ekipa ice cream compared with Koral and Grycan.
Pasieka Łysoń draws on the authentic, more than 30-year history of a family business, which it is only now learning to communicate consciously. The cooperative in Strzałkowo increased its quark production from 20 tonnes to approximately 3,000 tonnes annually through customer recommendations and consistent online communication since 2010, supported by Teraz Polska distinctions.
Distinctive products that are difficult to copy, such as quark, and a clear answer to the question of which specific consumer need abroad the “made in Poland” label is intended to satisfy, following the example of Italian cured meats, French cheeses and Japanese whisky.
Sources: