The participation in Anuga trade fair led by MATRADE saw Malaysian companies reaping huge export value potential

MALAYSIAN food & beverages (F&B) products featured at world’s largest F&B trade fair, Anuga in Germany, recently were well received after their participation in the event saw a total of RM106.7 million in export value being generated.

The event was held at Koelnmesse, Cologne in early October involving 32 Malaysian exporters, Ministry of International Trade & eCommerce Sarawak and Malaysian Palm Oil Council.

Among the products showcased by the Malaysian companies were coconut-based products, coffee, tea & cocoa, ‘Ready-to-eat’ meals, beverages, noodles, confectioneries, cooking oil, frozen food, sauce & paste and functional food.

This was MATRADE’s 10th participation in the century-old Anuga, which was attended by 7,590 exhibitors from 106 countries. During the event, Malaysian brands were exposed to over 170,000 trade visitors from 201 countries.

Among the importers that have expressed interest from Malaysia included Japan, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, among others.

One of the Malaysian companies at the event, Ken Tan from Bon Food Industries Sdn Bhd said, “This was our first time participating in Anuga, the result was fantastic and we received about 50 high-quality enquiries from various global buyers.

Anuga also served as a platform for us to touch based with our existing customers in Europe. We strongly believe this initiative by MATRADE will boost our export sales in year 2020. Thank you MATRADE for organising such successful event.”

Similarly, Abdul Malek Manap from Munif Hijjaz Marketing Sdn Bhd said, “Anuga 2019 was a great stepping stone for Munif Hijjaz Marketing as we were able to meet with one of Indonesia’s largest distributors who we met at MIHAS 2019 in Menara MATRADE, Kuala Lumpur.

The Indonesian distributor has initially expressed his interest to bring our products to Indonesia during MIHAS 2019. Seeing us in Anuga, it helped to boost his confidence on our company’s credibility and this helped eased our negotiation process with the distributor.”

In 2018, total trade between Malaysia and the European Union (EU) for Processed Food amounted to RM3.39 billion. Malaysia’s exports of Processed Food to the EU totalled RM598.2 million, while imports of Processed Food from the EU amounted to RM2.79 billion.

Malaysia’s exports of Processed Food to the EU for the period of January – July 2019 was valued at RM533 million.

Among the EU countries, Germany is Malaysia’s largest trading partner. Other than the EU, Malaysian food products have reached markets such as the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia.

Dyson officially opens the doors to its new Dyson Demo Store at Mid Valley Southkey, Johor Bahru.

The space has been designed to encourage visitors to pick-up, test and experience Dyson’s latest technology.

Dyson V11TM cord-free vacuums

Thanks to the new Dyson digital motor V11, which spins at up to 125,000rpm, the Dyson V11TM cord-free vacuums provide powerful fade-free suction with 20% more suction power than its predecessor, the Dyson Cyclone V10TM vacuum.

The Dyson V11TM vacuums bring a new level of intelligence to cleaning, automatically sensing and capturing debris, while reporting vacuum performance on an LCD screen in real time.

Visitors to the Dyson Demo Store at Mid Valley Southkey will be able to experience the machine on three different floor surfaces, with a variety of dust and debris at hand. Customers will be able to speak to Dyson experts about which technologies are most suitable for their home.

Dyson Pure CoolTM Purifying Fans

The Dyson Pure CoolTM purifying fans remove 99.97% of allergens and pollutants as small as 0.3 microns from the air, while projecting purified air to you and your space. The Dyson Pure CoolTM purifying tower fan and Dyson Pure CoolTM purifying desk fan automatically detect and capture microscopic airborne pollutants in your home, reporting live indoor and outdoor air quality to the Dyson Link App – allowing users to remotely track the inside air quality at all times.

Dyson experts are on hand to explain the way in which the hardware and software integrate to give the machine intelligence and reveal invisible airborne pollutants.

The Dyson Pure Cool MeTM personal purifying fan is engineered to support your well-being, delivering cleaner air and a more comfortable cooling experience with the new Dyson Core FlowTM technology – a perfect fit for your personal space, whether beside your bed, on your desk, or in a nursery.

Dyson SupersonicTM hair dryer

Conventional hair dryers can be bulky and difficult to manoeuvre, can blast air at high temperatures, which can cause extreme heat damage, all with the risk of hair being sucked into and trapped in the filter. Dyson engineers set out to rethink the hair dryer.

Powered by the patented Dyson digital motor V9, the Dyson SupersonicTM hair dryer uses a fast but focused airflow, is engineered for balance in the hand, is quieter than others and intelligently controls the temperature to help protect hair from extreme heat damage.

It is the result of a £50 million investment in its development, including the creation of a state of the art laboratory dedicated to investigating the science of hair. Dyson engineers spent over four year studying hair from root to tip, understanding how it reacts to stresses, how to keep it looking healthy and how to style it.

Dyson AirwrapTM Styler

Unlike most styling tools that rely on extreme heat to style hair, the Dyson AirwrapTM Styler uses jets of air to allow you to achieve voluminous curls, natural waves and smooth blow-dry finishes – at home.

Using Dyson’s fast, high-pressure digital motor V9, the Dyson AirwrapTM styler harnesses a phenomenon known as the Coanda effect. The effect occurs when a high-speed jet of air flows next to a surface and, due to differences in pressure caused by the surface, the air flow attaches itself to the surface.

Taking advantages of this principle, Dyson’s team of aerodynamicists created a way to style hair using only air combined with heat. The result creates a natural look with a sleek finish, helping prevent extreme heat damage.

The new Dyson Demo features styling stations to allow for people to test and experience the Dyson SupersonicTM hair dryer and Dyson AirwrapTM styler. Dyson Beauty Advisors will be present to explain how the machine works and offer styling advice. Customisation on hair care machines is offered, while complimentary in-store styling appointments will be also be provided.

Dyson Lighting

All products in the Dyson Demo are illuminated by Dyson Lighting’s Cu-BeamTM suspended lights, which use a single high-power LED to project powerful light, precisely where it’s needed. Thanks to their effective cooling system, which uses heat pipe technology to direct heat away from the LEDs, prolonging their life, the lights stay bright for up to 180,000 hours.

Engineered to provide the right light for the right time of day, the Dyson LightcycleTM task light supports your body clock with local daylight tracking that continually adjusts colour temperature and brightness.

Designed to reduce eye strain with over 1,000 Lux brightness, the Dyson Lightcycle maintains light quality for 60 years, thanks to Heat Pipe technology. User personalisation is a feature that is made possible through the Dyson Link app – designed to support optimal illumination throughout the day.

Will Kerr, Design Manager, New Product Development, Dyson, says: “It is critical for people to be able to test and experience our technology, so they can understand how it works.

This space is designed with that in mind. You can pick-up the machines, pull them apart, and thoroughly test them, whether it is a cord-free vacuum on our test tracks with various dust samples or hair styling with Dyson hair care technology.

The opening of the new Dyson Demo Store in Southeast Asia is a testament to our ambitions to expand our footprint further and to bring Dyson technology closer to the people in Johor Bahru.”

Dyson General

Dyson is a global technology company with engineering and testing operations in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and the UK. Dyson employs over 12,000 people globally including 4,500 engineers and scientists – with an increasing proportion in South East Asia where production and operations also take place.

Dyson is realising ambitious plans to develop new technologies with global teams focused solid state battery cells, high-speed electric motors, vision systems, machine learning technologies, and A.I.

Dyson’s 67-acre campus in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, UK, is home to the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, which opened in September 2017. Dyson is making a £31m investment into UK higher education to help overcome the shortage of engineers in the UK.

The four year degree programme, free of tuition fees, covers the fundamentals of engineering in years one and two. It delivers electronics and mechanical engineering content in years three and four – all alongside a paid job within Dyson’s research and development team, working on real products, with leading engineers and scientists.

Dyson in Malaysia

Dyson came to Malaysia in 2000. The task was to create a team that successfully takes a product from development and design to manufacture.

Today, the 35,000-sqm Malaysia Development Centre (MDC) in Johor is our design, prototyping and testing ‘powerhouse’, driving growth and scale across our product categories.

Dyson employs more than 1,100 people in Malaysia – close to 800 are engineers or technicians – and further supports the Malaysian economy through its supply chain network.

Dyson opened Southeast Asia’s first Dyson Demo at The Gardens Mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in September 2017. The space is engineered to encourage people to pick up, test and experience Dyson’s technology.

First e-Wallet to adopt DuitNow QR, Malaysia’s National QR Standard

Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) and Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading everyday app, announced a landmark collaboration that will make GrabPay the first e-Wallet to adopt DuitNow QR, Malaysia’s National QR Standard.

DuitNow QR is established under Bank Negara Malaysia’s Interoperable Credit Transfer Framework (ICTF). ICTF mandates that PayNet, as the country’s shared payment infrastructure provider, implement an interoperable and common QR standard for Malaysia. Four Banks are already offering DuitNow QR in their mobile banking apps, with 25 Banks expected to implement DuitNow QR over the next six months.

DuitNow QR will foster an efficient, competitive and innovative payment landscape in Malaysia by enabling interoperability, promoting collaborative competition and providing fair and open access to the shared payment infrastructure.

Through DuitNow QR, users can make payments from any participating Banks or e-Wallets’ mobile apps. Merchants would only need to display one QR Code, the DuitNow QR, to accept payments.

“At the moment, e-Wallet providers are incurring substantial acquiring costs for merchants since they are each signing up the same set of merchants for their respective proprietary networks.

With DuitNow QR, a merchant needs to sign up with only one Bank or e-Wallet acquirer, and customers of all participating Banks and e-Wallets would be able to make DuitNow QR payments to the merchant using their respective mobile apps,” said Mr Peter Schiesser, Group Chief Executive Officer, PayNet.

Since the announcement of Grab’s, strategic partnership with Maybank and the launch of GrabPay (Grab’s in-app e-wallet), GrabPay has been reimagining the future of digital payments in Malaysia and across the region, especially with the vision to be the everyday e-wallet, meeting the daily needs of users.

Coupled with the constant introduction of new features and a rapidly growing partner network of both financial institutions and local merchants, this has significantly increased the adoption of virtual payments innovatively, which is in line with the government’s push to move Malaysia forward in the digital economy and cultivating a cashless society. With its admission to the DuitNow QR scheme, Grab will add DuitNow QR support in the Grab app by the first half of 2020.

“We are honoured to be the first e-Wallet to adopt DuitNow QR. With this partnership, we are confident that it will propel GrabPay further to provide a seamless and safe payment method for customers and merchants.

The fact that DuitNow QR is interoperable, firstly, simplifies and provides users with a frictionless whilst rewarding payment method for consumers whilst providing our merchants a safe and cost effective way to collect payments.

Our strategy has always been focused on being hyperlocal, and our partnership with PayNet is yet another example of being customer centric in our approach in growing Malaysia’s cashless society as it makes it even more affordable and accessible for all Malaysians to do so,” said Ooi Huey Tyng, Managing Director of GrabPay Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

DuitNow QR is an extension of the DuitNow service launched in December 2018, which allows Bank customers to transfer money instantly and securely on a 24/7 basis at Banks’ Internet or mobile banking channels.

DuitNow fund transfers can be directed using the recipients’ mobile numbers, MyKad or business registration numbers.

Following the path set by Grab, another 15 e-Wallet providers and non-bank merchant acquirers have also applied to participate in DuitNow. “Potential participants undergo a rigorous assessment and due diligence process before admission into the DuitNow scheme as we place great emphasis on the safety, security and stability of our payment eco-systems,” added Schiesser.

Grab’s entry into the DuitNow eco-system coupled with the upcoming participation of all retail Banks and major e-Wallets in Malaysia will cement DuitNow QR as the QR payment solution for Malaysia, providing a convenient, cost-effective, and ubiquitous payment option for all merchants and consumers in the country.

RHB Banking Group is intensifying cross-border efforts while strengthening collaboration with the Lao government to assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) build and expand their businesses regionally.

RHB Bank Lao Limited (RHB Bank Lao), a subsidiary of the RHB Banking Group, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary and has since helped Malaysian SMEs set up business with the local SMEs in Laos.

It continues to support consumers and businesses alike, mainly in food and beverages services and also for the construction sector.

Since its inception in 2014, the RHB Bank Lao has since grown to become the second largest Malaysian bank operating in Lao PDR in terms of asset size. Its SME asset growth has grown from USD21.7 million in 2015 to USD52.8 million in 2018. In 2018, SMEs in Laos made up almost 60% of RHB Bank Lao’s portfolio.

“RHB Bank Lao Limited offers a wide range of products and services, with an added focus on SMEs that goes beyond conventional banking services, where we aim to provide our customers with a holistic ecosystem comprising end-to-end solutions.

As a customer-centric bank, putting our customers first has always been our key agenda and in doing so, we strive to create mutually beneficial partnerships that offer our customers greater value. Key to this is understanding the different needs of our customers at different stages of their life and in their business,” Chin Yoong Kheong, Chairman of RHB Bank Lao Limited said in his speech at the Group’s fifth anniversary dinner held in Lao PDR recently.

The anniversary dinner was attended by customers and business partners, and was graced by Her Excellency Madam Vathana Dalaloy, Deputy Governor of Bank of Lao PDR and His Excellency Mohd Aini Atan, Malaysian Ambassador to Lao PDR.

Also present was Tan Sri Azlan Zainol, Chairman of RHB Banking Group and Dato’ Khairussaleh Ramli, Group Managing Director, RHB Banking Group.

The Group commenced business in Lao PDR on 6 June, 2014, with the first branch in Phonxay Village. Since then, RHB Bank Laos Ltd has expanded to having two additional branches with the second branch located in Sithan Neua, and the third branch in Dongdok.