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Demand for organic products is growing in the Middle East

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In the Gulf countries in 2015-2019, the organic market grew by 14% on average annually.

This information was provided by the Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office of Ukraine during the webinar Organic Market Review of the Gulf Countries, which took place just before the exhibition Organic & Natural.

Until 2026, annual growth at the level of 7-9% is expected. The largest markets are the market of Saudi Arabia, which reached almost 83 million dollars according to results in 2020, and the UAE market, which is 34 million dollars. It will be recalled that the global market for organic products reached almost 110 billion dollars (106 billion euros) in 2019 and continued growing rapidly in 2020.

The Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar) are 70-90% dependent on food imports.

Although they have their own export of products such as vegetables and fruits (apples, carrots, tomatoes, asparagus, peppers, figs, dates, etc.) and grains that are grown in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the countries import groceries, dairy products and some other vegetables and fruits.

Own production of organic products is currently in its early development. The UAE has the highest percentage of land under organic production, about 1.2%. In other countries in this region, the percentage does not even reach 0.1.

The legislation in the field of organic production in Gulf countries is not yet fully developed but, for example, the UAE legislation allows the import of organic products that meet international standards of organic production.

As Andriy Olefirenko, Director of Organic Original, said after returning from the exhibition, local UAE businesses are less aware of organic production than European countries and just start to be interested in organic products. This demand is amplified by consumer demand and the global trend towards healthy nutrition.

As Katarina Gosheva Cheshlarov, founder and managing partner of Midway Middle East, noted during her speech at the Organic & Natural conference, — “the COVID-19 pandemic pushed consumers to think about their health and the health of the planet.”

Consumers are more willing than ever to invest in their health and understand the close connection between nutrition and general well-being.

If in pre-covid times, the taste of a product was often the most important for the final choice, now the consumer is primarily focused on product quality and health benefits.

But producers must be flexible and creative, both in production and in the formation of the proposal, which should be based on detailed studies of the target audience and attention to its needs. After all, individual nutrition, a new trend, considers age, gender, lifestyle, genetic predisposition, physical activity of each individual, etc.

These trends are amplified by local conditions and characteristics of the Gulf countries, in particular, population growth. According to Olga Gvozdeva, an expert on international market analysis at the Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office of Ukraine, the population of the region is now about 180 million, and by 2025, it’s expected to grow to 200 million.

The main consumers of organic products are millennials who prefer healthy and natural products for themselves and their children.

Apart from that, countries of the region are implementing a policy of reducing the consumption of fat, sugar and salt, which also stimulates consumers to buy natural products.

For reference:

Organic & Natural is the only trade event in the Middle East dedicated to organic and natural products. The event is organized under the patronage of the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Protection and provides an opportunity to meet buyers from the Middle East.

In 2021, Ukraine for the first time took part in the international exhibition of organic and natural products Organic & Natural Expo Middle East, which took place on December 6-8 in Dubai, UAE. 7 organic producers were presented at the collective pavilion. During the exhibition, the Ukrainian pavilion was visited by more than 1,000 visitors, Ukrainian producers had more than 250 business meetings with potential buyers, and exhibitors were able to visit the Ukrainian pavilion at EXPO 2020, where the Days of Ukrainian Organic Products took place during the Organic & Natural exhibition.

The official catalogue of the Ukrainian pavilion can be downloaded here.

The material was prepared jointly by OrganicIndo.ua and the Swiss-Ukrainian Program «Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine» in the framework of the preparation and holding of the exhibition “Organic & Natural”.


The Project implemented by the State Institution «Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office» and NGO «UNITE UKRAINE» with the support of Switzerland within the framework of the Swiss-Ukrainian Program «Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine» implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland), and the Enterprise Europe Network.

The project is funded with the support of the Government of Switzerland, the European Network of Enterprises EEN, the state budget of Ukraine and participants in the collective exhibition of Ukraine.

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