Tuesday 16 / April / 2024
Muscat: The Industrial Innovation Centre (IIC), in cooperation with the Strategic Innovation Company, UK - the strategic partner of IIC, organized the first preparatory workshop for setting an innovation strategy for the food and beverage (F&B) sector in the Sultanate.
The preparatory workshop aims to identify societal trends in the Sultanate, including the demographic transitions and the market trends, which raise the importance of developing visions, as well as setting policies and future directions for the F&B sector in the Sultanate.
A number of government and private entities involved in the F&B sector participated in this workshop, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources (MAFWR), Mazoon Dairy Company, MarkeetX.com, Tayseer platform for marketing Omani products, and YUZU Agriculture Farm for organic agricultural products.
The event was launched by Dr Abdullah Al Mahrouqi, CEO of the Industrial Innovation Center, who praised the role of the participating entities in supplying food products to the local market, which in turn contributes to achieving food security in the Sultanate.
He also thanked the participants for their response in executing the best efforts to set an innovation strategy for the F&B sector in the Sultanate, stressing on the importance of the cooperation between the academic, governmental and private sectors in order to bring the targeted strategy into practice.
Commenting on this event, Dr Bashair Al Riyami, Food and Beverage Innovation consultant at IIC, emphasized that the Sultanate’s F&B sector is a promising one and needs more regulation to ensure its sustainability, so as to contribute to creating more investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and providing new job opportunities as well.
She pointed out that IIC continues to utilize the best potential opportunities to enhance the feasibility of the F&B sector and to contribute to the exploitation of the Sultanate's natural resources, in cooperation with its strategic partners across the world.
She also emphasized that the innovation strategy for the F&B sector aims to understand the trends of the food and beverage sector in the Sultanate and to highlight the most important challenges faced by the F&B sector, in terms of its production and manufacture.
Nada Bassam, founder and CEO of Tayseer platform, one of the participants of the workshop, praised the role of IIC in enhancing the contribution of the F&B sector into the national economy. She also appreciated the continuous cooperation between the IIC and Tayseer platform in encouraging entrepreneurs and manufacturers in the F&B sector.
