Magazines Archives - 2011 July

NZTE hosts largest F&B showcase in S'pore
Story 12 - Food Business Asia

THE New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) hosted its largest F&B showcase in Singapore last month, featuring over 30 New Zealand companies displaying products that ranged from meats to seafood, dips, sauces, wine and dairy, along with a variety of speciality foods.

With the increasing growth in New Zealand F&B exports to Singapore, which has surged 147% in the past 10 years, the New Zealand Trade Commissioner to Singapore, Ziena Jalil, told Retail asia: "The response to the New Zealand Food & Beverage Connection has been overwhelmingly positive and, yes, some companies are working on potential deals as a direct result of this event.

"More than 100 hospitality professionals attended the event, including chefs, F&B directors, purchasing managers and restaurant owners from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines."

Participating to create more awareness for its products, as well as meet potential business clients, was Freshmart Singapore, the local distributor for New Zealand's Fressure Foods. Kevin Koh, Freshmart's business & operations manager, said that the company's products, a range of guacamole dips that are already available at local supermarkets such as NTUC FairPrice, Cold Storage and Carrefour, were very well received at the showcase.

"The general feedback was that the product was tasty and very fresh. Many were also impressed with the packaging, because it offered customers convenience, and [thus they] were keen to find out more about its availability," Koh continued.

Displaying a range of all-natural cocktail mixes was VnC Cocktails, represented by Auric Pacific Singapore Pte Ltd. New to the Singapore market with its launch in March in Cold Storage, the line of three exotic cocktails — namely Passionfruit Capri- oska, Pomegranate Cosmo- politan and Vodka Mojito — comes in two sizes: the 200ml mini shakers and the 700ml bottles, all featuring a taste of New Zealand-made vodka.

Yealands Estate Wines, "the first fully sustainable winery in New Zealand" which produces wines with low-impact methods and green technologies in its carboNZero-certified winery, found the event to be timely.

Said Debbie Jones, global brand manager for Yealands Estate: "We are just about to launch in Singapore in the next few months as soon as we sign up with a distributor ... and we are also in talks with retailers such as Cold Storage."

The company offers several tiers of wines to cater to different markets from premium labels for corporate customers to commercial wines for the hospitality and retail trade.

"This is our third vintage and we are already being distributed in 30 countries. We have experienced very rapid growth in two-and-a-half years," said Jones.

The estate has also launched a line of wine in environmentally friendly plastic bottles under the Full Circle label and this has been a hit in New Zealand./p>

Alongside the showcase was the New Zealand and Asia Food and Beverage Forum, which tackled topics such as the recent food scares from Europe, consumer trends, the growing need for investment into science, and an international collaboration to ensure safe and secure food supplies.

NZTE's Ziena concluded: "The com- panies found that the event enabled them to showcase their brands and products to decision-makers here. They met with several potential buyers and are now in the process of following up on the enquiries generated during the show." ra

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