After presiding over the opening of “THAIFEX-World of Food Asia”, which runs until Sunday at Challenger, Muang Thong Thani, Bangkok, Somkid said Thailand had strong capacity to develop its food supply chain to make more value-added products.

“Thailand’s strengths in the food industry are a great variety of raw materials and highly experienced producers. The government in cooperation with private enterprises will encourage more modern technology in food processing to add value for the products,” he said.

About 45 per cent of Thai food exports are unprocessed raw materials. That proportion should decrease in the near future after the country adopts more modern technology and promotes more innovation.

Tomorrow, Somkid will witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding to establish “Food Innopolis”, the city of food innovation.

More than 30 agencies including nine government units, 13 food companies and 12 universities will sign the MoU to develop foods for the future and create bio-based industries that keep Thailand competitive and benefit the entire value chain.

The project will support innovation in developing food quality, food ingredients, packaging, information technology and logistics so that Thailand has high potential truly to become the “Kitchen of the World” in the near future, Somkid said.

With more value-added products, he expects that food exports will grow by 10 per cent this year.

Vantanee Seang-U-Tai, managing director of Lucky Union Foods, said the company would invest about Bt20 million for quality and product development this year, as well as building a new laboratory to create new products under the innovation-promotion plan.

With strong demand for Thai food and trust in quality, while the problem of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishery practices has been declining, Lucky Union Foods expects 20-per-cent revenue growth to Bt1.6 billion this year.

Rojjanin Phatchararuangkij, managing director of Smile Heart Foods, an exporter of processed seafood products, said his company had forecast 20-per-cent export growth this year.

With rising health consciousness, the company will invest in research and development on producing new healthy foods to serve such consumer concerns as obesity.

Smile Heart Foods will also automate some of its production line and adopt new technology to reduce labour costs.

Vittavat Tantives, executive vice president for corporate marketing at Charoen Pokphand Foods, said CPF had paid high attention to food innovation. It will gradually introduce innovative products in its sausage, ready meal, chicken, egg and shrimp lines.

Normally, the company invests about 1 per cent of its sales revenue in R&D, he said.