Food insecurity could result in doom for Sri Lanka with processed food pack prices increasing in a sector that is considered to be observing the fastest growth rates of around 50%.

“There are four global issues that are being looked at and they are systematic financial, fuel, supply chain vulnerability and energy crisis,” Lanka Exhibition and Conference Service Manager Aasim Mukthar stated. Agribusiness, Processing and Packaging will be able to supply answers to three of the global issues that are coming up. He also added that if we are not secure with our food supplies we maybe doomed.

The planet’s population has trebled from 2.5 billion to 7 billion and will grow a further 30% in the next 12 years and the environmental destruction and indiscriminate use of the world’s resources has hit back at the core of the world’s food supply chain.

Important natural food resources such as the sea are soon becoming redundant and at the current rate of acidification it may not yield any more fish in its current form within the next 200 years and rising sea levels will destroy much of the cultivation as well.

“Packing is an essential component and both packaging and the food sector go together”, Sri Lanka Institute of Packaging President A. K. Ratnarajah said at the launch press briefing of the seventh annual Profood Propack exhibition coinciding with the third Ag-Biz 2008. We are going to have participants from the packaging manufacturers, importers of machinery, raw materials and machinery equipment and expecting to have foreign participants as well.

“The processed food packs has increased from Rs.11.8 to Rs.37.8 billion in 2006 and in 2007 it had increased to Rs.56.8 billion”, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Industrial Development R.V.D Piyatilake stated. The growth rate is around 50% and this can be considered the fastest growing sector in Sri Lanka. At present many of the Sri Lankan companies have obtained the HACCP certificate.

“There’s a lot of demand for livestock, poultry and dairy products as people are now dependant on all that”, Processors and Exporters Association President Sarath de Silva said.

It was pointed out that the need of the hour was to start “producing, producing and producing. We have the political will, the private sectors are ready to step in but there is something in between that is missing. We are also ready to work for our food security and earn foreign currencies and to that we have to make food production as a top priority in our list. “

This year’s Ag-biz and Profoods Propack 2008 is themed Global Ways Local Taste and is said to kick off from the August 22 to 24 at the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Memorial Exhibition Centre and is focusing on innovation, sustainability and knowledge.

Sri Lanka faces numerous challenges in moving away “from the highly politicised climate; disrupting free flow of the food supply chain and get back to a national agenda of peace.”

Moreover he stated that was a need to ensure budding scientists and entrepreneurs are capable of competing globally while thinking locally; and free up thousands of hectares of cultivable lands with the state to investors and farmers.

This exhibition is the largest food and packing exhibition in Sri Lanka and has grown a proven track record for bringing industry related buyers and suppliers together under one roof. It will be an opportunity for overseas packaging and other technology providers to introduce and tie up with prospective local representatives, and also to meet supermarkets buyers, importers and distributors one platform to establish business contacts, an opportunity for processed food companies to carry out product demonstrations test marking and special promotions during the exhibition and many more.