UAE’s future is manufacturing, French agriculture official says

If the Emirates wants to cement its place as the pre-eminent trading country in the Middle East, then its future lies in manufacturing, says a leading French agriculture official.

Speaking at the Dubai food retailing jamboree, Gulfood, Sophia Salmi, the head of France’s agricultural affairs, UAE, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, said companies and investors were now looking at the UAE with an increasing desire to lift production and opportunity.

“The future of this country is manufacturing. The main producer in the Middle East area is Saudi Arabia but that is not easily accessible,” she said.

The Emirates was “known for the high disposable income of the population. That has been changing over the past 10 years as more and more companies see the benefit of basing themselves in the UAE and using it as a springboard into the region and beyond.

“Dubai is becoming the hub for Africa as well as the Middle East. [The UAE] is a country that thrives on opportunity and manufacturing is one such opportunity that they cannot afford to miss.”

A sign of the growing importance of the Emirates in manufacturing is shown by Brazil’s BRF looking to increase its share of the US$13 billion regional market for processed foods by opening a processing plant in Abu Dhabi’s Kizad in July. The firm’s biggest plant outside of South America will mean faster delivery times and a greater range of product offerings.

“Production is growing in the region but at a slower pace than demand is growing, so we needed the plant in the Middle East,” said Yuri Bolivar Lebedeff, BRF’s research and development chief. “We save 40 days’ shipping time when we set up in Abu Dhabi. The investment is about US$150 million, employing about 1,000 employees when we are fully operational that will work in three shifts.

“We see this as a chance to make huge strides in the Middle East, being on the doorstep, able to provide the quantities of product that the supermarket chains or single operators need.”

The move to manufacturing is a trend that the Gulfood organisers have seen and already catered for, spinning off a separate exhibition in November that solely caters to heavy machinery and plant involved in food manufacture. That show, which will span Dubai World Trade Centre’s nine halls, is already 90 per cent sold out.

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