Dhaka: Biscuits, a staple of morning, midday, and evening tea in Bangladesh, are also a major export, particularly to the Middle East.
Bangladeshis prefer crunchy, flat, unleavened, flour-based biscuits, cookies, and crackers. They were traditionally plain or sweet, but recently, savoury versions have gained popularity overseas.
According to Shafiqur Rahman Bhuiyan, president of the Biscuit Association of Bangladesh, the increased demand for the snack is due to the perception that biscuits are now more than just nibbles.
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Since biscuits contain all the food nutrients—carbohydrates, fat, protein, etc.—a person may choose them in place of rice.
"Biscuits were once thought of as snacks, but this has changed recently. We have been able to establish the notion that biscuits are not snacks but a complete food since the days of COVID-19.
According to Bhuiyan, this was the primary cause of both the 10-15% growth of the domestic biscuit market and the rising demand on a global scale.
According to data from the Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau, during the first 10 months of the fiscal year 2022–2023 (or between July 2022 and April 2023), Bangladesh exported biscuits worth more than $30 million. Saudi Arabia received $9 million of the exports, followed by the UAE and Oman.
Malaysia and the Philippines were the two largest biscuit importers in Asia, each spending about $2 million on the goods.
The Energy biscuit is extremely well-liked for sharing cookies with friends and family because each pack comes with more than a dozen slices. Other names include Nutty and Potata, according to Bhuiyan, who spoke to Arab News.
As the name implies, potato-based potata biscuits are thin like crisps. Tangy and salty, they won over India, the largest biscuit exporter in the world, during the pandemic, where they gained popularity on social media for being simply irresistible. Nutty is sweet, as is Energy. The former has a milky flavour, while the former has a peanut flavour. Both are created by Olympic, the biggest exporter and producer of biscuits in Bangladesh.
Olympic also produces Hilux, the most well-known Bangladeshi biscuit brand in Saudi Arabia. Hilux is a cracker with a vegetable flavour.
Olympic's head of export Nazim Uddin told Arab News that "this brand has captured the hearts of many Arab consumers."
But Bangladeshis themselves, not Saudis, are the primary consumers of biscuits from Bangladesh. They number about 2.5 million and are a natural captive market for domestic producers because they reside and work in the Kingdom.
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According to Uddin, the Bangladeshi immigrants who live in the Kingdom and other Gulf nations are primarily responsible for our export market in those nations.
The UAE is currently our second-largest market in this region, behind Saudi Arabia. It's strongly correlated with the Bangladeshi population in a given nation. For instance, due to the large number of migrant workers in Qatar before the FIFA World Cup, we exported a sizable volume there. But now that many of the migrants have returned home, this export has decreased.