The DP World team engaged with F&B companies looking to expand their businesses outside of India and familiarised them with strategic solutions on offer, including plug-and-play platforms, end-to-end supply chain solutions, value-added services, and an investment platform.

Over the past decades, Dubai has developed a made-for-trade ecosystem that offers a robust infrastructure for global businesses and a transparent regulatory environment conducive to success. Through its strategic location and excellent multimodal connectivity, Dubai seamlessly connects India’s exports to new frontiers.

With bilateral trade between India and the UAE surpassing $60 billion in 2018 and poised to grow exponentially, the economic relationship between the countries has strengthened. India is now the second-largest trading partner of the UAE behind China. In support of this activity, Jebel Ali Port and Jafza provide a multimodal trade, logistics, and industrial hub that further enhances the facility’s role as India’s gateway to the world by facilitating F&B exports and opening new markets for Indian traders. The Jebel Ali hub is the preferred commercial gateway to a region of 3.5 billion people. This access sustains Dubai’s position as the largest re-export centre for food products, catering to a vast import-dependent region from the GCC to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), East Africa and Subcontinent markets.

Complementing the port facility is Jafza’s dedicated food and beverage cluster, spreading over 1.2 million square metres, and including 467 businesses from 66 countries, employing more than 5,880 people. Jafza also offers industry-specific value-added services, including packaging, storage, bagging and sorting, stuffing, palletising, and transportation.

The Free Zone also provides bonded and non-bonded zones supporting farm-to-shelf supply chain activities, common user facilities for tea and coffee trading and processing as well as sugar, grains, pulses, meat, edible oil, seeds, and other ready-to-consume food items. It is also home to the world’s largest port-based sugar refinery.

As part of its ‘India-UAE Bridge’ initiative, DP World, UAE Region, along with CII, organised a seminar on the eve of the 13th edition of ‘Foodpro’, India’s largest F&B event, to highlight the Dubai-based trade enabler’s efforts to integrate its assets in both countries.

Mohammed Al Muallem, CEO and Managing Director, DP World, UAE Region and CEO of Jafza, said: “We aim to reach out to Indian businesses seeking new markets internationally, especially from the F&B sector. The India-UAE Bridge synergies between DP World, UAE Region and India and the ports and logistics capabilities in both countries enable us to offer integrated supply chain solutions to businesses through our unique end-to-end solutions. We deliver the most productive, efficient and safe trading solutions by thinking ahead, foreseeing change and innovation.

“The India-UAE Bridge is a mutually beneficial initiative. India is the UAE’s second-largest trade partner, and as the region’s leading trade enabler, we are keen to sustain and build on our excellent partnership and create a relationship that will allow both our countries to prosper. Our flagship facilities, Jebel Ali Port and Jafza, are well-positioned to integrate our assets, providing the best-in-class business and logistics support to Indian companies operating in Jafza.”