Cairo, Egypt Feb. 20 (CNA) Fifteen food manufacturers from Taiwan are participating in Gulfood 2024, an international food and beverage sourcing event held in the Dubai World Trade Centre in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week.
The Taiwan Pavilion was set up by a delegation led by the semi-official Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Kaohsiung City Farmers' Association to promote foods and beverages that are all halal-certified.
The produced-in-Taiwan goods presented in the five-day food show range from coffee, juice and snacks to processed agricultural products, and TAITRA hoped the products will gain acceptance from mainly Muslim consumers in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
According to TAITRA, some of the Taiwanese companies participating in the food show, which primarily caters to the Middle East and North African markets, have done business in the region for many years.
Other companies, such as Mayushan Foods Co., Ltd., a Kaohsiung-based producer of rice bran and roasted wheat flour, were attending the event for the first time.
Leading the Taiwanese delegation is Wu Yo-ting (吳侑庭), a specialist with TAITRA's Dakwah Halal Foundation Taiwan.
Taiwan's government commissioned TAITRA to establish the foundation in 2017 to assist Taiwanese manufacturers in producing halal-certified foods that can be marketed to the vast Muslim communities around the world.
Those producers are hoping to cash in on a growing market for Taiwanese exporters in the region.
Taiwan's agricultural product exports to the UAE alone rose 51 percent in 2023 from a year earlier to US$16.2 million, said Chai Chieh-hsiu (柴介修), an official with the Commercial Office of Taipei in Dubai, on Tuesday.
The event, which runs until Feb. 23, features more than 5,500 food companies from almost 200 countries, according to organizers.
(By Shih Wan-ching and Wu Kuan-hsien)
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