Korean Fortified Food Development for UN Organizations and WFP Procurement

SEOUL,South Korea,Dec. 29,2022 -- Under the Fortified Food Project funded by the Ministry of Agriculture,Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA),for the purposes of vendor registration for UN procurement and development of export business model,a consortium has been formed by the Korea Institute of Procurement (KIP),BSR KOREA Corp and Korea Food Research Institute (KFRI) for the three beneficiary Korean food manufacturers (Soul Nature Food,J Food Service and KEIL Corp).

The manufacturers have developed emergency relief food with Korean rice as the main ingredient for 3 years (2020~2022) to contribute to sustainable communities. BSR KOREA,one of the host organizations indicated that this project is to support the manufacturers to enter the public procurement markets in UN organizations such as World Food Programme (WFP) by assisting strict quality control,due diligence,bidding strategies,invitation to international organizations,and global marketing strategies,as well as the product development.

Soul Nature Food,one of the manufacturers with ISO 14001 and 9001 is specialized in both general and health functional food. They recently have developed cereal-type food called Super Powder and Super Cereal as relief food to enable nutrition intake by simply cooking in remote areas with limited condition.

J Food Service is well known as a food premix manufacturer,acquired HACCP,HALAL and FSSC22000. They have developed energy bars as relief food,including an 8-grain powder mix containing non-glutinous rice,wheat,brown rice,and barley.

KEIL Corporation,aiming at the leader of the alternative food industries in Korea,is developing edible insect-derived hydrolyzed protein manufacturing technology. They are one of the Korea's representative green biomaterial providers and the strongest players engaging in the edible mealworm business. Mealworm is considered as the best alternative food to reduce carbon emission. KEIL values their products to fight the food crisis in vulnerable communities such as African countries.

On June 22nd,BSR KOREA invited officials from international organizations and government agencies in Kenya and Uganda (Minister and Vice Minister of Health Department,and Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and hosted a meeting to provide opportunities for the beneficiary manufacturers to introduce their products and technologies. The local government officials,procurement prime vendors,and the manufacturers had productive discussions by sharing their strategic plans for entering the procurement market.

Foreign high-level officials and prime vendors acknowledged the competitiveness of Korean nutrition food and emphasized that this meaningful discussion to seek will lead to food resilience and sustainable food chain. It is highly expected for Korean companies to recognize their possibilities to enter the UN procurement markets for the near future.