Why no food marketer should ignore Halal products

As the fastest growing religion in the world, with over 1.6 billion followers, Islam has become a formidable force. Though the muslim world constitutes a tiny fraction of the world's GDP, the sheer numbers speak for themselves. Especially in the developing world, as well as the slightly better off Middle East, the market size of products and services catering to Muslims is quite large and cannot be ignored.

Consider Halal foods, Islamic tourism, Shariah compliant products. Each of these categories are multi-billion dollar industries. While Jews have kosher food, all Muslims prefer ( or in theory have to eat) only Halal food. As a muslim, i can testify that this is an extremely important part of one's diet. One would forego meat and other foods which are considered "haram" . For a company catering to this huge chunk of people, there is a lot of money to be made, by identifying the needs and fulfilling them.


Dynamics Driving the Global Halal Food Market
-Growth in the Muslim population, the primary market for Halal food
-Rising incomes in primary markets for Halal food
-Increasing demand for safe, high quality food in primary markets
-Increasing demand for greater variety in primary markets
-Incidents of food marketed as Halal but failing to meet Halal requirements has
spurred demand for genuine Halal products
( source : http://www.ats.agr.gc.ca/africa/4352_e.htm)


Key Halal Markets Algeria Bahrain Egypt Indonesia Iran
Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Malaysia
Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria
Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates Yemen

Combined Population of key Halal markets: 652 million

Key Halal Markets in Non-Muslim Countries
India 140 million
France 6 million
China 40 million
Germany 3 million
USA 8 million
UK 1.5 million
Philippines 6 million

( source : http://www.ats.agr.gc.ca/africa/4352_e.htm)


While there are various estimates of the size of the Halal food market, a study conducted by the Canadian government estimates it to be in the range of US$500 billion to US$2 trillion. The more conservative value of an annual US$500 billion is a reasonable estimate of global spending on Halal food, as it assumes per capita spending on such products to be approximately US$300 per year.