UAE - This year’s edition of food and hospitality exhibition Gulfood will be the biggest ever despite the gloomy Dubai economy.
CEO Dubai World Trade Centre and Gulfood organiser, Helal Saeed Almarri, confirmed a 20 per cent increase on exhibitor space for the event has now sold out. This means the 15th edition of the exhibition will cover 1m sqm once it opens at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre on the 21 February.
"Companies large and small from around the world are increasingly taking an interest in the Middle East," says Almarri. "Gulfood is now recognised as the number one platform to gain an insight, and a foothold, into one of the world’s fastest growing markets."
According to Business Monitor International, food expenditure in the UAE reached US$6.78bn in 2009, with a prediction of a further 2.67 per cent expansion in 2010.
"I feel Gulfood is the most important meeting place for local and regional companies to showcase new services and products to an international audience," says deputy CEO of Al Islami Foods, Hamid Badawi.
New exhibitors at the show include participants from Kuwait, Lithuania, Uganda, Ukraine and Sudan.