Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited (CP Foods) received a good news that its five chicken processing plants are among 11 Thai factories have been certified from the Saudi Food & Drug Authority (SFDA) to ensure the company’s chicken quality is safe and strictly manufacturing under international Halal standard. The company will also export chicken to Riyadh by this month. 

Mr.Prasit Boondoungprasert, Chief Executive Officer of CP Foods, said that Saudi Arabia government has lift up import ban on Thai chicken, egg, chilled and frozen fresh chicken products, which it was implemented since 2004. SFDA has recently announced on its website to allow import poultry from Thailand including 11 producers of that CP Foods’ five processing plants have also been certified. This helps convince Saudi people as well as other importing countries to CP Foods’ quality meat and products are derived from international standard processing lines through Halal restrictions and quality control system to ensure traceability.

“We would like to give this special thanks to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Commerce Minister Jurin Laksanawisit, Agriculture Minister Chalermchai Sri-on and all government agencies on their efforts to work hard and negotiate with Saudi officials and closely monitor the outcome. This successful has allowed Thailand to re-export chicken to Saudi Arabia where its maximum import of chicken reaches about 590,000 tons to create great opportunity to Thai exporters, “noted Mr. Prasit.

Five CP Foods’ slaughterhouses and Processing plants have been certified by SFDA, including Minburi Slaughterhouse, Minburi Chicken Processing Plant I, Minburi Chicken Processing Plant II, Saraburi Slaughterhouse Plant and the Saraburi chicken processing plant. The SFDA had inspected the company’s operations since 2019.

The country is a high potential market with a population of 35.6 million people and opportunities within the Gulf Corporation Council. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is the country with the highest share of food imports at 52.7% and consume 45 kg of chicken meat per person per year, making 1.5 million tons per year in total demand.

Previously, CP Foods was the largest Thai chicken exporter to Saudi Arabia. The company’s first export batch to Riyadh will be shipped this month.

CP Foods is committed to developing quality chicken meat production that meet internationally-recognized standards. All the company’s slaughterhouses and processing plants are certified standards such as GMP, HACCP, ISO 9001, IFS, BRC Global Standard-Food, Halal, ISO 14001-Environment Management System, Social Accountability (SA 8000), Thai Labor Standard (Thai labor standards. -TLS 8001), OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety System) and ACC (Aquaculture Facility Certification). More importantly, the company has a special production process that meets Islamic standards such as using Islamic staffs for slaughtering chickens and all ingredients are Halal.

CP Foods’ chicken products have been trusted by customers around the world. The company’s key export destinations are high quality markets including Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.