JEDDAH: Kerry Group, the Irish food and beverage company is planning to use its new facility in Saudi Arabia to export its products to other markets in the region. Upon launching its new 21,500-square-foot state of the art facility in Jeddah last week, the company’s CEO Edmond Scanlon said the Kingdom is a dynamic food and beverage market. Over the last four years, Kerry has invested more than €80 million in the region, and this new facility, which is the company"s largest in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, or MENAT region, will produce sustainable food ingredients that will be distributed all around the Middle East. “We see consumers looking for more variety, for more exciting products and more sophisticated products in terms of both taste and nutrition. We see that health and nutrition is a top priority for the Saudi Food and Drug Administration and we see health and nutrition as being a very important aspect of the Vision 2030,” he told Arab News. He said Kerry can contribute to these objectives in three ways; firstly through developing local suppliers and to supply their manufacturing facility in Jeddah and secondly, providing food and beverage manufacturers with a local supply of food and food and beverage ingredients for the Kingdom and thirdly hiring local people across all functions. “Looking out into the future, building a center of excellence for food science, for food technology and food innovation will start with recruiting local university graduates,” he said. He highlighted that the region has good local and global food and beverage manufacturers. “And we believe we can work with these food and beverage manufacturers to bring the right products for this region into the market for what is a huge consumer base,” he said. Kerry also sees the Middle East region as a potential launching pad into Africa. “We’re very excited about taking the innovation from this region into other parts of the Middle East and also into Africa,” he said. Scanlon highlighted that localization and food security has always been an important objective right across the region. “But I believe this objective has only become more important in recent years, especially since COVID-19 has provided a lot of disruption to the overall food supply chain,” he said. He added:“Kerry’s strategy is a local strategy. We want to source, develop, manufacture and supply products in each country that we operate in. So this is part of our hyperlocal strategy, and we believe that that is very much in line with government aims when we look across the region.” Kerry Group is currently working through its plans for the next five to 10 years for the region. “It"s an important aspect of my trip,” said Scanlon, “as I have traveled the region for the last period of time and we"ve met many customers, we"ve met many food and beverage manufacturers, we"ve met many agencies right across the region to understand what the direction is for the food and beverage industry.” “We see many opportunities to further invest in the region. And we"re extremely committed to it. I"m sure we"re going to be announcing further expansion plans across the region in the not too distant future,” he added.