News & Events

The Gold Coast’s $356 million food industry is eyeing growth on the international market by creating a niche for itself in the development and manufacturing of sports, health and wellness foods.

A growing number of Gold Coast food industry businesses produce “functional foods”, products ranging from organic and gluten-free muesli, grains and flour, through to nutritional snacks, super juices and teas.

Many of these Gold Coast food manufacturers were on show earlier this year at Gulfood, the world’s largest annual food and hospitality trade show. 

The Business Gold Coast lead trade mission saw seven Gold Coast businesses attend the trade show in Dubai in order to increase their export capabilities. To date, the mission has delivered $372,000 worth of sales to local businesses, with this figure expected to climb to more than $3 million.

The Gold Coast businesses secured five new Middle East distributors, and generated over 240 quality food sale leads from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, India, USA, UK and Ireland.

Morlife Export Manager Raewyn Wise said that functional foods had proven extremely popular in international markets such as the Middle East, New Zealand, Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia.

“Morlife foods are specifically made to target and improve certain bodily functions and include snacks such as cereals, boosting powders, herbal teas and nutritional chocolate snacks,” she said. 

“The Gold Coast is the perfect location for Morlife to be based, its’ healthy lifestyle persona goes hand-in-hand with what Morlife is all about.

“The city was also chosen for its fast growing business activity, international recognition and convenience for exporting, being close to airports and ports.”

Gold Coast City Council Economic Development and Tourism Committee Chair Councillor Jan Grew said the Gold Coast was well positioned to capture a greater share of the growing international functional food market.

“Our region has a solid reputation for producing a diverse range of quality, disease-free products and functional food manufacturers particularly benefit from this. At the same time, increased health consciousness is driving demand for new products,” she said.

“As a result of the trade mission, we have seen strong interest in use of Gold Coast food products by food stores, health food specialists, chefs, restaurants, airlines, supermarket chains and online stores.

“The industry is continually developing and expanding, and functional food production is an exciting emerging market that the Gold Coast is excelling in.

“We will continue to help local food manufacturers establish strong distribution chains and export markets as well as extensive and diversified product lines.”