Eyeing a big piece of the lucrative Halal market

RECENT moves to diversify Brunei Darussalam's economy have taken a giant leap, from the Sungai Liang Industrial Park to the development of Pulau Muara Besar.

Another great idea has to do with encouraging the Brunei food industry with the introduction of the Brunei Halal Brand, a project to secure a slice of the lucrative global Halal market.

In 2007, Brunei made known its intentions by establishing a Halal standard in 2007, hence taking the first step in reaching out to a $996 million market, as calculated by the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. However there are many gaps that still need to be filled with a lot more questions raised about the next step. Firstly, what is the next step?

Neighbouring countries are taking aggressive steps in the race to secure a spot. For example, Malaysia has already started to position itself to become an international Halal hub with the support of its government, which has supported the objectives and taken a number of measures including the establishment of the Halal Development Corporation.

In Singapore, the food industry there has also taken a number of steps toward becoming a Halal hub, including carrying out an advertising campaign in the Middle East, while Thailand is out to secure a niche as a centre of excellence in science and testing in the Halal market.

One of the most obvious recommendations was made by Dr Paul Temporal, Temporal Brand Consulting's managing director and founder, last year who said that Brunei first needs an identity to secure themselves in the global marketplace.

"Brunei has to think about how it's going to position itself not only in Southeast Asia and Asia but in the global marketplace as a whole. So I think that although Brunei has got some awareness and people have heard of it, people don't really know much about it and what it stands for, so we have to look at how we can position Brunei in a special way so that people are aware of the fact that it is different and it is better in certain areas and what it stands for and so on," he said in an interview last year.

He added that the Brunei Halal Brand falls into Brunei's nation branding with recommendations that the Halal Brand could be of the sub-brands that can help outsiders relay what Brunei's overall identity is. But can a small country with less than half a million people enter the trillion dollar global halal industry?

Haji Abdulhamid Evans, managing director of Imarat Consultant, a consulting firm specialising in the halal market said that the market in Brunei is too small for the world to conform to Brunei's halal standards.

"Even in Malaysia, they've conformed to Malaysia to get their business but it's still not that big a market. If you're talking about the Gulf Cooperation Council, they have a huge buying power and the standard that they roll out is going to have a different kind of impact in the market, because food exporting markets which want to reach that market will learn to be compliant with the Middle Eastern standards," he said.

He added that this shouldn't deter Brunei's plan to have a slice of the cake. He said that the global halal market is not solely based on imports and exports of goods but that Brunei could position itself to be in the niche market of the Halal food market.

"I discussed with Nestle last year, and I remember asking them what the biggest challenges are for expanding their Halal production, and they said that the big challenges was going to find small ingredients like emulsifiers, colourings and all those little additives and getting Halal sources for those are quite challenging," he said.

"The industry in general is looking for meat substitutes for example, people are arguing about gelatine and how to source Halal gelatine, but gelatine can be made from vegetable sources as well, so if you go there, then the question of whether it's Halal or not doesn't really arise and those kind of opportunities present themselves to Brunei. Good joint ventures could come out of that," he added.

But is Brunei behind in the Halal food race? Evans said, "On one hand you can say that Brunei is a bit slow, but on the other hand, it's not, and because I've worked with other countries on this, and they're just as slow. To be honest, when I've looked at the progress being made in other countries, Brunei isn't any slower actually." The Brunei Times