Earlier this year, KQF visited the United Arab Emirates to attend the 2026 Gulfood trade exhibition, which was held at the Dubai World Trade Centre and the Dubai Exhibition Centre in Expo City.
The five-day international event is one of the largest of its kind and, this year, it had almost doubled in size. It attracted over 8,500 exhibitors from nearly 200 countries, and they showed off more than 1.5 million products. The expo normally takes place in February but it was moved forward due to the timing of Ramadan, so it began in late January.
KQF managing director Faruk Vali attended the exhibition. Explaining the reason for his visit, he said:
“Gulfood is a great source of new ideas and potential contacts. I am always particularly interested in the new and emerging product trends coming from the East, which eventually make their way to the West. There’s a steady flow of new, creative products coming out of the region and it’s a great opportunity to meet a whole new range of exhibitors that aren’t normally found in European or western shows.
“Our new product development work takes a lot of inspiration from the products and solutions that are shown at major food trade events like this. New ideas are born and we can often turn these into commercially saleable products.
“While we were visiting, we also used the opportunity to meet up with some of our global suppliers; companies from India, China and elsewhere. We source all our meats from Britain and Ireland but we pride ourselves on the authenticity of our spice blends, so we source many of their raw ingredients from the countries where they were typically first used and refined.”
Since attending the event, the KQF team has begun exploring a raft of new product ideas, which are now undergoing trials to determine their feasibility and the suitability of different product formats.
KQF manufactures its own range of products but also offers a quality-controlled, halal-certified contract manufacturing facility. To find out more about these services, please contact us.
