Baltimore – Knowledgeable industry experts said it could not happen just a few years ago: an independent home-grown company focused on destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Dubai emerging as the top exporter of the best known brand of beef in America. Yet at the annual Certified Angus Beef® conference last month attended by hundreds of key players in the U.S. beef industry, that is just what happened. At the prestigious CAB Awards Banquet recognizing leaders in different industry segments, United Source One received the brand’s coveted #1 Sales Volume Exporter for 2009. Imgarten attributes his company’s success with Certified Angus Beef to the 1) quality of the product, 2) the science and integrity behind the CAB brand, 3) great CAB U.S. supplier cooperation and 4) the strong commitment to the brand by its partners in the Middle East.

Imgarten, 56, gained experience as a businessman in that region of the world working as a sales manager of U.S. beef in Saudi Arabia starting in the early 1980s. “He would drive a truck across the desert to camps set up by American corporations with staffers hungry for American food,” reports the Baltimore Business Journal. Today, United Source One exports 75 percent of the Certified Angus Beef entering the Middle East.

United Source One operates from a 45,000 square foot USDA-inspected facility and distributes frozen, chilled and non-refrigerated foods to importers in the Middle East. Halal-certified beef accounts for about half of the company’s exported goods. US-1 exports to high-end food service distributors and to the American style casual restaurant sector that includes more than a dozen U.S. chains operating in the region. In 2009, the company will export 1000 food consignments by sea and air employing 75 staff of highly trained export specialists.

Imgarten admits, “Ten years ago, we had difficulty getting international buyers to understand the value of the CAB brand. When the U.S. beef bans were lifted in 2005, we decided with our trading partners to reintroduce U.S. beef by going with the best quality product so it would be a clearly superior choice to beef available from other countries. The strategy worked. We consider CAB the best value in high quality beef and the CAB organization to be the crème de la crème of the beef industry. We are truly honored to be the #1 exporter of Certified Angus Beef worldwide. The award recognizes the value of the CAB brand as well as the power of committed people and relationships on both sides of the world.”

United Source One won another major CAB award in 2006 being named Export Marketer of the Year. Other US-1 awards and industry recognitions in recent years include the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) ‘Exporter of Year’, Ernst & Young’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ finalist in 2008 and 2009, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Annual ‘Hot 100’ list of America’s fastest-growing new companies and SmartCEO Magazine’s ‘Future 50’ winner.