Saudi Gazette

ٍRIYADH — Tetra Pak, the world’s leading packaging and processing solutions, participates at the Dates International Conference 2018 launched last Wednesday under the auspices of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman Bin Abdulaziz at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

The main purpose of the conference is to showcase the major investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia’s date industry, which is among the top three global producers of dates with 14 percent share of the overall market.

Speaking to Saudi Gazette, Ziyad Al Jadid, Operational Marketing Director, Tetra Pak Arabia, said “Tetra Pak is the global leader in food processing and packaging solutions and our support for the conference is driven by our sense of responsibility towards the nation and to contribute to the objectives of Vision 2030, which includes environmental excellence, sustainability and the growth of the private sector in the Kingdom.”

“We are participating in the Dates International Conference 2018 at the invitation of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture” said Al Jadid

Commenting on Women empowerment in Tetra Pak Arabia, Al Jadid replied that “Tetra Pak is a very divers company but of course we are also keen on localization and of course women comes as part of it. I am lucky as in my marketing team there are two females working with me”.

With 40 years of experience in the Saudi market, Tetra Pak Arabia sees the Dates International Conference as a prime opportunity to inspire the dates industry to branch out into ancillary industries such as date milkshakes, date ice cream, date paste and others that would serve to expand the dates industry.

Tetra Pak is a major producer of often patented technology (the company as a whole secures 20-30 food processing patents yearly), including the world’s highest-capacity extrusion machine for ice cream sticks and ice cream sandwiches, just one of its technological innovations that can be integrated into the growth of the date market.

Operating from a booth on the conference showroom floor, Tetra Pak Arabia representatives will showcase the company’s processing solutions while presenting new ideas for opening the market to entrepreneurs and SMEs with the ability to renovate the dates industry.

Tetra Pak Arabia’s commitment to food packaging innovations and solutions to help business growth and industry growth cover the entire food packaging industry. In 2016, the company launched a new version of the Tetra Pak Plant Master, which provides the capacity to manage an entire plant through a single control and data management system that includes full end-to-end information management.

“Our Customer Innovation Centre (CIC), allows us to support brands in a more collaborative and systematic manner, inspiring them to come up with so many new products,” highlighted Ziyad Al Jadid. “Although Tetra Pak has long customized its services based on interaction with clients, the CIC provides direct access to tools, competencies and a global network of experts as a means of ensuring customers maintain their competitive edge.”

The conference attendees include Royal Highnesses and Their Excellences the Minister Environment, Water and Agriculture, and a gathering of representatives from governmental sectors, leading national and international companies, and specialists and academics from institutions such as Harvard University and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The agricultural area of date palm cultivation in Saudi Arabia is 1,073 km2 and productive date palms cover 157,000 hectares of national land. The total number of date palm trees is 28,570,704 and Saudi palms produce 400 types of dates. The total annual production of dates averages 1.1 million tons and in 2016 Saudi Arabia exported about 129,186 tons of dates.

Tetra Pak puts environment as one of the main pillars of its business. Besides sourcing all its raw material from renewable and producing 100% recyclable products, Tetra Pak adopts processing technologies that are very efficient in energy and water consumption as well as in power emissions. This comes in line with the objectives of Vision 2030 towards environmental excellence and sustainability.