Eka Global to grow with rising food delivery trend
Food safety drives longevity packaging growth
Eka Global sees high growth potential driven by consumers’ concern over food safety and the increasing demand for ready-to-eat meals and longevity packaging. The company also plans for nationwide road shows to showcase how its longevity packaging can turn Thai SMEs into global businesses to help Thai SMEs capture business opportunity in the global market.
Mr. Chaiwat Nantiruj, Eka Global’s CEO, said that the COVID-19 pandemic has existed for a while and new infection cases are on the rise. This situation encourages people in Thailand and other countries to be pay more attention to foods, the health benefits in the food they eat and hygiene. Home delivery food is more popular as people work from home and stay at home more to minimize risk of getting infected when going out. These open new business opportunity for longevity packaging.
“At Eka Global, development and innovation are at the heart of our business,” said Chaiwat. “We have been continuously developing new products that directly address the quickly changing consumers’ demand in terms of food safety, hygiene and lifestyle. Our wide range of longevity packaging also meet food producers’ requirement and new food production technologies like High Pressure Processing (HPP) and Modified Atmosphere Packaging Process (MAP) that can maintain food quality, taste, nutritional values, color and texture while extending the product shelf life up to 2 years.”
“We are proud that our innovative products unleash food producers from many limitations and enable them to create products that are not only tasty and hygienic, but also meet modern consumers’ lifestyle. Our innovative packaging which has 11 ultrathin layers can effectively prevent outside air to penetrate the products, keeping the product shelf life longer. Such technology also enables consumers to simply warm their ready-to-eat food in a microwave oven or put the pouch in hot water,” added Chaiwat.
In addition to its large-scale food producer customers, Eka Global also eyes food-producing SMEs nationwide. The company considers that there is a huge number of SMEs across the country. Through easy access to high quality packaging that can extend product shelf life, maintain food quality and safety, these SMEs will be able to eliminate the pain points and increase competitive advantages in the global market.
“When entering into the global market, these food producers can enhance their competitiveness with innovation, not only volume and price. Thai SMEs are second to none. They only need opportunity. Eka Global, therefore, plans a nationwide road show after the pandemic situation improve. We will meet with SMEs in the north, northeast, south and the central region and encourage them to join our packaging innovation test program and explore new business opportunities and grow together,” he said.
In 2022, Eka Global will continue the development of green products to provide wider environmentally-friendly choices for food producers in addition to its currently 100% recycle packaging. Eka Global is working on R&D of three products namely 1) bioplastic (PLA) which is partly made from natural products such as tapioca, corn and sugarcane; 2) biodegradable packaging that is made totally from natural raw materials and can be naturally degraded, and 3) packaging made from post-consumer recycled products (PCR). It is expected that the first product from this plan will be unveiled in 1-3 year time.
