Eight years ago, Taleb Mohamad Almahmoud started importing a non-alcoholic beer popular in the Middle East to Malaysia. Now, he is bringing more than 300,000 bottles of Dubai-brewed Barbican into the country a month.
“There are many Arabs here and they like the drink because there’s no alcohol,” Syria-born Almahmoud said on Monday during an interview near his shop in downtown Kuala Lumpur that also stocks spices, couscous, pickled olives and Turkish coffee. “Malaysians like it too.”
The popularity of halal products such as Barbican that comply with the Koran’s tenets helped drive a 5.2 percent gain in the SAMI Halal Food Index of shares this year, beating a 0.6 percent rise in the Bloomberg World Food Index.
The industry’s expansion is also flowing through to debt markets, with the Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) estimating that companies involved in Shariah-compliant food, textiles, tourism and healthcare have sold US$5 billion of Sukuk to date.
A Sukuk is a financial certificate that adheres to Shariah and typically denotes the Islamic equivalent of a Western bond.
The outlook for the US$2 trillion global halal industry that also includes fashion and entertainment is underpinned by a worldwide Muslim population that the Pew Research Center sees growing at twice the rate of non-believers through 2030. Demographics like that have lured Switzerland’s Nestle SA — the world’s biggest food company — to cater to the sector and it now markets Shariah-compliant noodles and breakfast cereals.
“Halal is a huge industry and the growth rate is massive,” Baiza Bain, director at Islamic finance consultancy Amanie Advisors Pty Ltd (Australia) in Melbourne, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “Companies are making sure that they adopt the inclusiveness policy that will broaden their market.”
Spending by Muslim consumers on halal products and services worldwide is forecast to increase 52 percent to US$2.47 trillion by 2018 from 2012, according to a September report by the Kuala Lumpur-based MIFC.
“The relationship between Islamic finance and halal industries is mutually beneficial,” the center said in the report, adding that there are opportunities to invest surplus funds throughout the value chain.
Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd ships its products to more than 50 countries and may soon start exporting to Europe and South America, Zainun Abdul Rauf, executive director for corporate affairs, said in an e-mail interview on Monday from Selangor State, near Kuala Lumpur.
The share price of the company, which set up a 700 million ringgit (US$208 million) Sukuk program in 2003, has risen 0.9 percent this year, beating a 2.4 percent drop in Malaysia’s benchmark stock index.
Worldwide sales of bonds that comply with Islam’s ban on interest have increased ten-fold in the past decade. Issuance has reached US$42.1 billion so far this year, 18 percent more than at the same point last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Ajinomoto Co, Japan’s third-largest food company, sells Shariah-compliant food seasonings and drink sweeteners. The Asian nation and Spain have held halal summits this year to explore ways to develop the industry, while the UK plans to set up a business park to produce Shariah-compliant meat, according the center’s report.
As well as prohibiting products that include alcohol and pork, and banning gambling, Islamic tenets require that animals be slaughtered in a particular way, accompanied by the recitation of a prayer.
Halal Industry Development Corp, a Malaysian government agency, estimates the global industry excluding financial services exceeds US$2 trillion and will grow 4 to 5 percent annually.
Demand for Shariah-compliant products will come from established centers such as the Middle East, as well as emerging markets, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, chief executive officer Jamil Bidin said.
“The global demand is huge,” he said in an interview on Monday near Kuala Lumpur. “Many non-Muslim countries are participating in this because they see that halal is big business.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”