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Bengal Meat coming of age

Gazi Towhid Ahmed, back from Pabna
Even a decade ago, cold cuts, cured meat and specialty cuts were the reserves of well-off connoisseurs: the places which sold them were few and far between and the pricesexorbitant.
Enter: Bengal Meat Processing Industries into the scene in 2006, providing customers with a taste of safe meat and meat products.
Its products include primal cuts of cattle, lamb and goat, whole chicken, marinated chicken products, cured meat including smoked turkey, and cold meat such as salami, specialty sausages, luncheon meat and corned beef.
With 24 outlets under its name, the company caters to a growing consumer class who are weary of the quality of meat sold in the kitchen markets, where allegations of sales of water buffalo meat in the name of beef are rife.
"We have been able to ensure that our meats are not only fresh but also exactly what the customers want. There is no such fraudulence in Bengal Meat," AFM Asif, chief executive officer of the company, told The Daily
Star during a visit to the company’s meat processing plant in Pabna.
In the short span, Bengal Meat has been able to win the hearts of top restaurants and hotels.
It regularly supplies beef and goat meat to the country's five-star hotels including Westin, Radisson and Sonargaon in Dhaka and the leading hotels in Cox's Bazar, including Ocean Paradise, Hotel The Cox Today and Mermaid Cafe
The company also supplies meat to the country's most elite clubs such as Dhaka, Gulshan and Uttara as well as diplomatic missions.
“We are expanding our distribution through opening of new outlets in prominent locations as well as kiosks in leading supermarkets," Wayne Gaskell, a director of the company, said. At the heart of the success of Bengal Meat is its insistence on high quality.
Food Equipment Australia, a leading Australian company in food processing automation, provided technical assistance to Bengal Meat in setting up the plant at Santhia.
This technology ensures hygienic meat processing with significantly superior quality and higher productivity compared to traditional butchering, Gaskell said. The key features of the technology are: hygienic automated cutting equipment, minimum human touch and no contamination from the digestive tract, said the Australian national.
The company has an ammonia plant that supports robust refrigeration system, ensuring the right temperature all throughout the processing line and storage and prohibiting microbial growth. “We provide hygienic and halal meats to consumers through advanced technology," Gaskell said, adding that his company follows international abattoir standards with proper halal certification.
The company follows halal and ISO 22000 protocol, a standard developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation dealing with food safety in each step of the process, according to Asif.
Furthermore, its halal practices have been validated locally by the livestock and fisheries ministry, the Islamic Foundation and globally by Jakim, a halal certification
authority of Malaysia.
"We follow 34 stages including medical check-ups of the livestock to ensure quality." At present, Bengal Meat's production capacity is 16.8 tonnes a year.
The company sources animals from its sister concern Bengal Livestock and Fodder, which has its own farm along with a 30-acre fodder cultivation area. Bengal Livestock sources cattle from Pabna, which is historically renowned for its large supply and quality breed variety, according to Asif.
Going forward, the company is looking to grab a sizeable share of the global halal meat market, worth about $400 billion. Of the ten largest halal meat exporting countries, nine are non-Muslim ones. "Bangladesh has a huge potential to set a footmark in this sector, "the Bengal Meat CEO said.
The company currently exports to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, the Maldives, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Malaysia, and is in talks with companies in Saudi Arabia. The company has been growing at a healthy pace. It expects to clock a turnover of Tk 110 crore this year, a 30 percent increase over last year's.
gazitowhid@thedallystar.net