The boycott of Danish products over cartoons offensive to Muslims has forced a Bahraini company to change its name.
The boycott also boosted business for Middle East companies as a major Danish farm products company Arla had its products pulled out of shelves.
The Bahrain Danish Dairy Company (BDDC) changed its name to Awal Dairy Company after it lost over BD150,000 following a 35 per cent drop in sales. The company’s products were removed from sales in Gulf supermarkets including Saudi Arabia. Though it is a 100 per cent Bahraini company and does not use Danish ingredients, there have been some misconceptions because it carried the name Danish. BDDC, whose sales in 2005 were BD8.25 million, had severed its links with a Danish group in 1993 and is a 100 per cent Bahraini company with Trafco holding 51 per cent of its shares and Yousif Abdulrahman Group holding the remainder
In other related developments, UAE-based Mecca Cola, touted by its makers as an alternative to Western brand soft drinks, has seen sales triple since anger erupted in Muslim countries over the offensive cartoons.
Chairman Taoufik Mathlouthi said at a food industry exhibition that he planned to list Mecca Cola on the Dubai stock market, adding the process could take more than a year.
Mathlouthi declined to give figures for turnover but said 1 billion litres of Mecca Cola had been sold in 2005, adding that average monthly demand in Malaysia, a key market, was 500,000 cans a month last year.
Distributors in Malaysia were now demanding 1.5 million cans a month, he said. Other markets, including Algeria, Yemen and France, had seen similar trends.
The Gulf countries’ boycott of Danish products hit Denmark’s economy resulting in the loss of sales worth $27 million in just the early days of the unrest.
Arla Foods, Europe’s second-largest dairy company, said no job cuts were planned in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, where the company employed 800 staff in a Riyadh factory where production had been halted. An extension of the factory there had, however, been put on ice.
