Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at the Food & Hotel Asia - Food & Beverage (FHA-F&B) 2025

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

1. Very pleased to join you this morning for the FHA-F&B 2025. This year, we welcome over 1,500 exhibitors from over 50 countries and host about 65,000 attendees. It’s good to be back here at FHA-F&B 2025 again. Things are moving at rapid pace and let me address the elephant in the room, and that is the shocks to global trade and markets over the past week, and even as we speak.

Staying Global

2. What is true is that the global order is changing. Some people say it is a significant shift. I think it's an epochal shift. The global order is changing, if it has not already. Let's speak about these disruptions to trade. The disruptions to trade supply chain and markets have been felt keenly, and the impact has already reverberated across many sectors, including our food and manufacturing sector. So, the question is, what can we do? What can you do? Who do you speak to?

3. Let me suggest a few things for us to consider. The first thing that we need to do is to continue to stay global, even if trade is fragmented, even if trade is disjointed, even if supply chains are being reconfigured, because trade will find its way. Trade will find its way just as it has over centuries, over millennia. And food - if you think about Singapore as an entrepot, food, spices were the earliest goods that were traded around the world. So, stay global we must.

4. Our food manufacturing sector has significant international reach with exports accounting for about 60 percent of sector sales. This global presence has contributed to about S$4 billion in value-add to Singapore's economy and supported the employment of over 60,000 workers. To help our companies to stay global, my colleagues at Enterprise Singapore have been helping them to access new markets.

5. I'll share with you two new resources. These include the “Internationalisation Handbook for Food Manufacturers”, which helps businesses like yours to expand overseas, and also the newly introduced Cost Competitiveness Playbook, which helps companies to optimise your business costs for overseas manufacturing. To complement these, we also extended and enhanced the enhanced $100,000 grant cap for the Market Readiness Assistance Grant by one more year to March 2026.

6. We will also continue our work with our Trade Associations and Chambers to expand networks with key international buyers and to diversify supply chains. I just looked across and I saw Uruguay meats. I've been travelling all over the world in Africa to Europe to Latin America, and a couple of years ago we signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the MERCOSUR States. That's one of our 27 FTAs that Singapore has signed over the years, and the MERCOSUR market comprises Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.

7. We need to keep the trade links open. We need to help our businesses to make use of the 27 FTAs. If you are working with our Singapore Business Federation, they have a very useful tool called the Tariff Finder tool to help businesses to navigate this uncertainty. Please use these FTAs to expand into new markets.

8. I'm very proud to say that there are about 70 Singapore companies exhibiting at the Singapore Pavilion today. Our companies are incredible - they carry with them the strength of the Singapore brand, and what is the Singapore brand? It is a mark of quality. It is a mark of innovation. It is a mark of excellence, and in times of crisis, a mark of resilience that resonates among global buyers. Our boldness to venture abroad would enable Singapore to flourish internationally.

Continuous Innovation

9. In addition to staying global, we must stay creative in the face of global challenges. Our local food manufacturing companies must create and innovate to preserve Singapore's rich food heritage. We'll see many of these innovations in this hall today, from our food manufacturers and food tech startups as they take centre stage at today's Heritage to Horizon showcase. It offers a daily rotating menu that creatively weaves traditional flavours with the future of food like the reimagined Singaporean classics - Laksa. It is Laksa crafted using Prima Taste and redefined with alternative ingredients like Oatbedient’s Plant-Based Milk and Eat Plant Love’s Plant-Based “Fishball”. Or Gyoza Crunch, a dish featuring Karana's jackfruit-based gyoza, Leong Guan’s wanton crisp repurposed from unused dumpling wrappers, and enhanced with Altimate Nutrition’s cricket powder for an added protein boost.

10. This year is also significant because Singapore celebrates our 60^th birthday, our sixty years of independence, and so this show is apt, because this showcase features heritage food brands celebrating our sixty years of heritage and food tech startups as well, bringing together innovation and tradition to shape our future food landscape.

Sustainability sets the stage

11. Even as we stay global and creative, we need to stay green. Consumer expectations remain, and international sustainability regulations are becoming increasingly stringent. Companies must meet these standards to access global markets and stay competitive to stay unique. To address this need in Singapore, we have established Food Manufacturing Centres of Innovation across our polytechnics. What do these centres do? These centres help companies to implement sustainability practices and develop new products using upcycling technologies. I'll share a few concrete examples.

    1. Mr Bean, which is a local soy milk company, is a good example. It partnered with Republic Polytechnic to upcycle okara, which is a highly nutritious, yet often discarded by-product from its soy milk production processes, and they make this into granola bars.

    2. We've also had many innovation challenges. These innovation challenges have also encouraged our companies to develop green and sustainable products. The ‘Upcycle Revival Challenge’ by the Food Innovation and Resource Centre last year helped companies create new products from food side streams, like what Tan Seng Kee did with ‘Krunch Up’, a crunchy topping from repurposed dumpling wrapper trimmings.

    3. These products are on display at our Singapore Pavilion.

12. We are doing more on this front. Enterprise Singapore is developing a Food Manufacturing Sustainability Roadmap for 2030, which includes a toolkit to help companies like yourselves embark on your green journey.

Conclusion

13. In a more uncertain, fragmented, turbulent world, our sector must continue to stay global, stay creative and stay green. To everyone here today, can I make a clarion call for everyone to stay invested in Singapore and what Singapore has to offer - a food paradise, a culinary capital, and a global creative and green hub for food manufacturing sector to flourish. The Singapore brand is strong. It can command a premium but not just in premium differentiated products that can better absorb price increases like health foods, halal certified foods.

14. The Singapore brand is strong. Investors looking for a safe haven in a storm knows about the Singapore brand - strong infrastructure, stable government and unparalleled connectivity. We remembered a couple of years ago during COVID-19, event organisers like Informa and others trusted Singapore to host large scale events like this safely. In a crisis, in a storm, Singapore remains the oasis of calm.

15. I wish all companies here a meaningful showcase at this year's FHA F&B 2025. A big thank you for your trust in us. Thank you for joining us this year, and my congratulations to Informa Markets for yet another successful edition.

16. Thank you very much.