Tamkeen, Bahrain's labour fund, recently held a meeting with companies from the food industry to discuss support for the sector to grow its institutions and build fruitful partnerships with their foreign counterparts and export their goods to foreign markets.

Tamkeen hosted the meeting with a Special Interest Group from the food industry, that has been introduced by Alwane Society, which included a number of food manufacturing companies, restaurants, packaging companies, hospitality companies and startups representing the food industry in Bahrain.

The participating companies aimed to have a common vision, one voice and one mission on how the industry will keep track with the current trends, innovations, and to be more in the international market.

The importance of government support to the food industry in Bahrain, the difficulty of communicating with the concerned entities, limited information about Bahraini products in the food sector, training and qualifying Bahrainis in this sector, the importance of participating in local and international events and exhibitions and the limited information about the on-going events, and the limited training and development were discussed thoroughly during the meeting.

In this regard, the continuous Bahraini participation in Gulfood was discussed for its importance as the world’s largest annual food and beverage trade exhibition taking place February 16-20, at Dubai World Trade Centre.

This is based on the great success recorded by the Bahraini food establishments and entrepreneurs who participated in the previous editions of this exhibition within the Bahraini national pavilion organized by Worksmart for events management.

During meeting, Dr Ebrahim Janahi stressed the keenness of Tamkeen to support various Bahraini projects and institutions as a basic step towards developing the food industry. He pointed out the great importance of this sector in achieving food security for the Kingdom of Bahrain, in addition to its ability to grow and expand due to the increasing demand for food locally, regionally and globally.

Dr Janahi noted the efforts made by Bahraini entrepreneurs in the food and hospitality sector and their endeavours to present their products, develop their businesses, and benefit from innovative food production methods that are shared by various international experiences.

For his part, chairman of Alwane Society Ammar Awachi explained the objectives of Food Special Interest Group that aims to highlight the challenges and identify the opportunities facing the food industry companies in Bahrain in order to achieve more growth for the companies and strengthening the national economy.

Awachi praised Tamkeen’s support for this sector in many aspects, including supporting Bahrain’s participation in the Gulfood exhibition, allowing for the way forward in strengthening the Bahraini food industry, exchanging the latest ideas and market trends, and opening wider horizons for exhibitors to search for investments in foreign markets and in partnership with their counterparts in the region and the world.

He talked about the increasing presence of Bahraini woman as a pioneer and businesswoman in the food industry, restaurants and cafes sector, as well as women who produce a variety of foods and sweets from their home.

“We at Alwane Society work specifically to encourage the economic independence of Bahraini women, and in this context we stress the importance of the food sector for women, especially since a large number of institutions in this sector are led by women,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service