Middle East Food (MEF), the pioneering business-to-business magazine for the Food, Beverages, Ingredients & Packaging sectors in the Middle East & North Africa, is proud to announce the winners of its 2008 Excellence Awards. The program’s aim is to celebrate great innovations and exquisite achievements within the rapidly evolving Food industry in the Middle East & North Africa region. The judging panel was comprised of MEF’s Honorary Editorial Consultants (HEC) who worked together with the magazine’s editorial team to identify the winners. Decisions were based upon the study and analysis of each company’s performance and activity documentation and the cyclic comparison of the observed results.

Product of the year

KleenHeat^® from Heat and Control Pty Ltd combines efficient external heating of cooking oil with superior pollution control. Surpassing simple afterburner technology, KleenHeat connects to fryer exhaust stack to incinerate odors, oil and other particulates that would normally pollute the air and area around the plant.

Located in Brisbane, Queensland, Heat and Control’s manufacturing facility has for over 40 years, provided food processors around the globe, services and equipment systems that offer real efficiency. The trend for more sustainable practices goes well with the Heat and Control philosophy and the Brisbane team along with an international network of experienced people from China and Europe to the Middle East offer solutions to those in the food industry who need sustainable systems. Heat and Control has developed various technologies that make a variety of energy savings such as improving air quality, water conservation and reduction in energy use plus we have made them available to existing operations as a retro-fit as well as for new commissions.

Fastest developing company

Altea Packaging is a large flexible packaging converter in the Mena region with total turnover that will exceed in 2008 the US$ 100 Million figure, and a unique geographical presence that includes 7 plants in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia (2), Egypt (2) & France. The company started off in 2005 from Cogitel, which was the flexible packaging leader in Tunisia, with a total turnover of around US$ 18 Million. In 2005, the company acquired 52% of Sied, the number 2 in the Tunisian market. In 2007, it acquired the remaining 48% in Sied, a 100% of Roland Emballages in France and started a Greenfield in Algeria (Cogitela) which led it to a total turnover of around US$ 49 Million, and in 2008, it acquired Optima in Morocco and Porta/Rotopack in Egypt, which will lead to a total Turn Over of over US$ 100M.

For an industrial company, Cogitel would have multiplied its turnover by over 5 times in less than 3 years, combining organic and external growth.

Innovation of the year

Technica International recently built a packaging machine for bottles or packs in plastic crates with multifunctional capability. The challenges forced the designers to come up with many innovative ideas that were incorporated in the machines including:

-       Separating the loose bottles from the packs on two different conveyors for easier handling.

-       Parallelogram mechanism for the guides to allow very quick side guide adjustment to the various bottles sizes

-       Pick and place packer with dual stations for packs and bottles

-       Clockwork mechanism inside the head of packs to allow rotation and orientation

-       Centering devices of the crates inside the stacker to force perfect nesting

-       Dividing the crates into three lines with three stackers to meet the speed and the merging three lines into two by transfer cars

Ingredient of the year

FORTIGEL^® is a new natural ingredient comprising specially purified Bioactive Collagen Peptides^® (protein of the connective tissue in animals) for joint cartilage regeneration.

A healthy cartilage consists of 70% collagen, 25% proteoglycans and 5% other miscellaneous substances including cartilage cells. FORTIGEL^® promotes the regeneration of joint cartilage by stimulating the cartilage cells to produce more collagen and proteoglycans. This unique ability of FORTIGEL^® has gained it a firm standpoint in the treatment of osteoarthritis, a disease characterized by joint cartilage degeneration leading to immobility and pain. In addition, FORTIGEL^® does not contain gluten, purine, tryptophan, GMO and cholesterol, and thus is not associated with the risk of any allergy or side effects. Its neutral taste and odor properties coupled with its excellent solubility makes it ideal for fortification in a variety of food products.

Newcomer of the year

Eco-polymers was recently established in Dubai and Sharjah and have signed a contract with Symphony Environmental Ltd., a British public company, appointing them exclusive distributors in the Middle East (except Saudi Arabia), for Symphony’s range of d2w™ oxo-biodegradable plastic additives and also to build a factory to produce these products, to meet growing demand.

Ordinary and recycled plastics can now be made oxo-biodegradable by including d2w™ additives which make them degrade, then biodegrade, on land or at sea, in the light or the dark, in heat or cold, in whatever timescale is required, leaving no fragments, no methane and no harmful residues. d2w™ oxo-biodegradable products meet American Standard 6954, and is made from a by-product of oil refining which would otherwise be wasted.

Packaging machine of the year

Multivac developed Multivac R535, a generation of thermoformers with seamless and rigorous implementation of a hygiene-optimized design, with a view to meeting the following requirements:

-       Ability to clean critical machine zones down to a microbiological level

-       Simplified access to internal components for inspection, maintenance and cleaning

-       Sealed cavities and avoidance of dead spaces

-       Use of smooth surfaces which are easy to clean

-       Avoidance of residual liquid on the working surface

This involved a complete reworking of the external machine parts (the "food zone") and of the components inside the machine (the "splash zone").

Drink of the year

Saba International Company is a regional agent of "RECHARGE" energy drink and is offering the distributorship or sub sales agency in the Middle East, CIS and North African Countries. This healthy energy drink could also be suitable for children, old people, and pregnant women, as it has no caffeine and taurine. RECHARGE has also 1000 mg of Vitamin C which is required for the growth and repair of tissues in all parts of the body. Vitamin C is necessary to form collagen, an important protein used to make skin, scar tissue, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels. Vitamin C is essential for the healing of wounds, and for the repair and maintenance of cartilage, bones, and teeth. As a sport drink, it has Electrolytes to replenish the loss of body fluid due to strenuous exercise, it also has Halal standard which gives it an important advantage compare to the other energy drinks available in the MENA market.

Distributor of the year

Al Ghurair Foods (AGF) - a part of Al Ghurair, has made tremendous progress over the years; growing from a small flour mill in 1976 to a technologically advanced, world scale, multi-product manufacturing enterprise. With a turnover of over a billion dollars, plants operating in the UAE and several overseas locations and a market presence in over 50 countries, it is one of the largest foods manufacturing and marketing business in the Gulf.

The Trading and Procurement Department of Al Ghurair Foods is involved in the trading of grains, oilseeds, meals and crude edible oils. More than three million metric tons of cargo is handled every year which amounts to 75,000 forty feet containers a year or over 200 containers a day. To back up its trading and procurement business, and bring added flexibility to its operations, AGF has installed silos with grain storage capacity of over 360,000 tons.

Food technology innovation of the year

The innovative Tetra PlantMaster from Tetra Pak Processing Systems breaks through all the barriers to good communication within a food processing plant. It is an innovative and modular plant automation solution based on open industry standards and production know-how.

Modern food production increasingly relies on automated processing systems for running the plants. Furthermore, business systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems need to connect to the real-time automation applications on the factory floor. In order to get a good payback on these huge investments, food producers must find ways to connect their different systems where planning, raw material handling, inventories and reporting are crucial for correct and effective business analysis.

It’s all about making the systems communicate with each other. The real-time systems of processing and production need to communicate with the databases that send and receives information in seconds – and interact together with the business systems that handle planning for months and years ahead.