Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

Running since 1987, the "Gulf Food Hotel and Equipment Exhibition and Salon Culinaire" (Gulfood) from Dubai to the world has become one of the much-awaited – if not the most-awaited among emerging and well-established agri-based food producers/manufacturers/exporters from the Philippines.

According to the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry-Center for International Trade and Expositions and Missions (DTI-CITEM)-Philippine Participation at Gulfood 2025 project manager Atty. Anna Grace Marpuri, they no longer have to wait for the last day of the submission of applications with completed requirements, based on observation through the years.

Meanwhile, Gulf Today learnt that DTI-CITEM also opens the participation to overseas Filipinos. One of the sites that appeared on the history of the Philippines at “Gulfood” yielded to the “Call for Participation” correspondence of the government agency through the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, California (USA) – coursed through the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs – promoting Gulfood” as “one of the world’s biggest food and hospitality industries, held annually in Dubai.”

That campaign correspondence stated that the 25 Gulfood participants in 2024 received 2,413 trade enquiries that generated $136.738 million (Php7,932,923,439.00/Dhs502,235,926.93) sales.

“We start the campaign eight months prior. For this year, we were all done in August 2024,” Marpuri said, an indication that Gulfood has sunk into the food manufacturers/producers/exporters’ psyche.

“Another measurement is that when we were already setting up our pavilion last Sunday, there were already feedbacks that they would be getting wider or bigger spaces next year. So you see, the Philippines cannot afford not to participate. Truth is, Gulfood has become a mainstay project for us at CITEM," Marpuri also said.

A first-time participant is the Pacific Sybergy Food & Beverage Corporation affiliated with the Vikings Group of chain of restaurants in the Philippines. A bottled water company in 2015 that started importing beverages from Malaysia, its USA-educated founder/owner Charles Lee transformed it to produce sugar-free electrolyte beverage and sugar-free prebiotics soda.

Company International Business manager Martin Teoseco said that so far, they had joined trade fairs in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and France. Management decided to join Gulfood this year, having received positive reviews from a staff who went to “Gulfood 2024” as a visitor: “My colleague reported that Gulfood would surely help us go global with the massive crowd from last year.”

It is the second year of participation for Lion Hearts Farm Inc. which rents a 5,000-hectare coconut plantation, owned by one of the six indigenous tribes in the South Rizal town of Palawan province, by the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea). Its Slow non-alcoholic low glycemic index coconut sap/flower beverage, a twist from the Philippines’ alcoholic “tuba” is among the three short-listed for the “Gulfood Innovation Awards 2025 – Best Beverage Product.”

Company Global Sales head Anita Vogel said that fellow Danish Christian Eyde Moller and Anders Haggen whose wives are Filipinas, founded the company pre-Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). They wondered “why coconut products are so expensive while coconut farmers remain poor.”

Consequently, COVID-19 survival had to be addressed. Moller’s inquisitiveness and his and Haggen’s heightening collaborations with the 1,000-strong tribal farming families led them to the research-and-development of the non-alcoholic tuba. They were informed that the local alcoholic tuba is “medicinal and ayurvedic.”

With the product base being pure coconut sap/flower and water, the non-alcoholic healthy tuba has been developed with four other flavours. The company mission of providing higher pay for coconut farmers has been achieved by dislodging the middlemen. They have  been distributing within the Philippines, as well as exporting to the USA, Germany and UK, by way of their website.

Nineteen homegrown food companies including five consolidators are participating at “Food Philippines." Fisher Farms Incorporated, whose Bicol Express deboned milkfish is competing for the “Gulfood Innovation Awards 2025 Best Frozen or Chilled Products,” is a stand-alone.

According to DTI-Export Bureau Management Assistant Director Katrina Rivera, over-all the UAE is the Philippines’ 18th trading partner out of 230, the Philippines’ 21st export market out of 205, and the Philippines’ 16th export supplier out of 221.

Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Alfonso Ferdinand Ver said that a representation of the enduring and enhancing diplomatic and bilateral relations between the Philippines and the UAE is the yearly participation of Filipino agri-based food producers/manufacturers/exporters at Gulfood; even as by way of the recent “World Governments Summit 2025” and the one-day Nov. 2024 work visit of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., at least nine memoranda of understanding that include renewable energy, Artificial Intelligence and digitalization, had been secured.