In his keynote at the Halal Perspectives: Opportunities in Times of Uncertainty webinar, Hj Sallim Abdul Kadir, Chairman, Warees Halal, noted that COVID-19 has surfaced new challenges.
“Businesses are rethinking on business models to enhance resilience and looking at new opportunities,” he said, pointing to consumers having shifted to “work from home, study from home, everything from home”.
“The halal market is a key avenue for you to be able to expand...because the demand is ever-growing.”
He also announced the Warees Halal Network, a collaboration platform to connect halal industry players and facilitate growth as well as business opportunities. “It is a trusted suspport system to gain resources through curated online and offline channels,” Hj Sallim said, adding that members will enjoy exclusive benefits from Warees Halal and its partners.
Signatories for the Warees Halal Network included Warees Halal CEO Dewi Hartaty Suratty; Victor Lee, CEO, CIMB Bank Singapore; Amos Ong, Head, Global Banking, Maybank Singapore; Martyn Cox, Event Director, Informa Markets; Jack See, Head, Casualty & Finpro Southeast Asia, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions; and Ronnie Faizal Tan, VP, Operations, HAO mart.
Demand for halal food and beverage is definitely growing, with global Muslim spending on food and beverage is projected to reach US$2 trillion by 2024.
Professor Paul Teng, Adjunct Senior Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (NTU) as well as Dean and MD, National Institute of Education International, spoke at the same webinar about food insecurity in Singapore surfaced by COVID-19. While Singapore is moving towards producing more food, the foods of the future will include new types of food such as cell-based meat, plant-based protein and insect protein.
"It would be good to organise that and link to the halal picture for halal certification," Professor Teng said.
Emil Fazira, Senior Research Consultant, Food & Nutrition Research from market intelligence firm Euromonitor International, said that prevailing pre-COVID-19 trends for the halal food industry will continue, with some differences. She listed several pre-pandemic halal food drivers, including interest in travel and culture; choices based on principles and morals, such as sustainability, health and wellness, and animal concerns; the use of Blockchain and e-commerce in the ecosystem driving a need for halal certification, and a natural interest in on-trend products.
Since COVID-19 struck, consumers have become more conscious about what they want to eat to avoid falling ill, Fazira said. They are keeping their distance from shop staff who would have provided them with information pre-pandemic, and they are adapting to travel and trade restrictions, she said. These changes in behaviour have in turn led to changes in the way consumers seek food, she explained. For example, they scrutinise product packaging more closely to understand the origins of the product and its ingredients, and are moving to self-education and self-discovery of food as well.
Fazira added that traceability will become more significant as it builds brand trust, minimises food fraud, and shortens the time needed for contact tracing in spoilage and contamination cases. One business which is championing traceability is the OneAgrix online B2B marketplace for agricultural and halal food, she shared. The company uses Blockchain to validate halal certificates, as well as farm-to-fork DNA tracing for food provenance.
Euromonitor predicts that travel will not reach pre-COVID levels till 2022 or 2023. “Over the next two years, they won't be able to travel (or enjoy) cultural immersion and authentic foreign food,” she said of consumers, forecasting a spike in domestic demand for halal-certified foreign brands and foods from authentic foreign sources as a result.
She highlighted the interest in K-food, or Korean food, as exemplified by the interest in making chapaguri (a mix of the Chapagetti and Neoguri noodles made by Nongshim) after the movie Parasite went viral. While Nongshim was behind the original chapaguri noodles, its competitor Shinsegae Food won out in Southeast Asia with the halal-certified Daebak family of noodles - this despite Daebak noodles being double the price of local instant noodle brands, Fazira said.
“Make trending products availble to halal consumers as they seek similar experiences to other consumers,” she said.
“Food will travel to the consumer more in the future,” she concluded. “Brands positioned as 'natural' and 'healthy' will be more sought-after.”
There will be pressure on firms to ensure transparency in their supply chains and branding to ensure trust, a new focus on food provenance, as well as demand for authentic and exotic halal food.
Hannah Pearson, Founding Partner, Pear Anderson, widened the outlook to Muslim-friendly travel, which she recommended travel providers support given that one in three people will be Muslim by 2060. "This is not a trend, this is here to stay; this is not going to disappear in a few years," she said.
She suggested easy first steps for travel providers in line with the OIC/SMIIC 9:2019, Halal Tourism Services – General Requirements standard that aims to ensure that products and services provided for Muslim travellers are in accordance with Islamic rules. She stressed that Muslim travellers are not homogeneous, with different tolerance levels for what they are willing to accept for halal tourism, and different levels of interest in what they like when travelling. "Different markets will have different priorities," she said, showing a graph of priorities for Indonesian and Malaysian Muslim travellers. While both groups rated health and safety protocols as their top concern, the percentages differed on other parameters such as whether there is halal food available.
Pearson suggested that basic things hotels can do is prepare a "welcome kit" for Muslim travellers that include listings of local mosques and halal-certified restaurants. Services and amenities that can be available on request would include providing local prayer times, prayer rugs, as well as removing alcohol from the minibar.
"Three out of those four are free," she pointed out, acknowledging that the only cost to hotels will be time spent on research.
Hotels interested in going beyond the basics can consider adding an indication of the qiblah (قِبْلَة)*; label buffet food that contains pork or other haram (حَرَام; forbidden) ingredients; creating a pork-free corner at the restaurant for meals, with separate utensils provided; and to offer suhoor and iftar meals** during Ramadhan if room service is not usually open at those times.
Pearson stressed that such hotels should add a section to their websites detailing Muslim-friendly amenities as most travellers prefer to Google when they research a destination. They are also likely to share findings to social media, then ask their friends and family.
Halal Perspectives: Opportunities in Times of Uncertainty was organised by FHA-Food & Beverage in partnership with Saladplate and Warees Halal. Saladplate, the international wholesale marketplace for sourcing food, beverages and hospitality products globally, featured the webinar as part of its Halal Week that is on till 23 November.
Warees Halal is part of Warees Investments, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the MIslamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis), set up to provide local halal facilitation and international certification services. The company is a one-stop halal centre that brings holistic solutions to businesses through its halal advisory, capacity-building, international certification and trade-link services. It caters to businesses that intend to export their products and provide services to Muslim consumers worldwide.
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*The qiblah refers to the direction in which Muslims should face in order to pray. It points towards the Ka'abah in Makkah.
**Muslims who are fasting eat a pre-dawn meal (suhoor) and break their fast after sunset (iftar) during the month of Ramadhan.