With a focus on the growing interest in gourmet food, Israeli confectionery company Almahdi Sweets is launching its selection of Arabic sweets and conserves into global travel retail.
The company said it sees travel retail as a stepping-stone to developing new domestic markets overseas, and is targeting the gifting market.
With 70 years’ experience in Arabic confectionery, the brand specialises in sweets in small-portion sizes (1cm x 1cm or 2cm x 2cm). It claims to use healthy ingredients and less sugar than other brands to offer a “different and healthy alternative to sugar and chocolate confectionery”.
Almahdi Sweets’ range includes:
Dry Sweets – a variety of dehydrated dough types, including golden brown and white baklava and kadayif. The selection, which uses ghee and French butter, offers over 30 shapes with a range of fillings including pistachio, cashew, peanut, pine nut, and almonds.
Baklava – a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey.
Cookies and biscuits – made from flour, semolina or black cumin, butter milk, medjoul dates, sesame, honey, walnuts, cinnamon and spices and pistachio.
The brand said that long shelf life without the need for refrigeration makes its dry sweets ‘perfect’ for travel retail.
Almahdi Sweets Founder and CEO Mahdi Arslan said: “Travellers the world over are looking for new, innovative, high quality products. Fine foods and confectionery is a growing category, a universal gift, ideal for impulse purchasing, with global appeal to all ages.
“With a long shelf life of at least 12 months Almahdi Sweets are ideal for travel retail, offering a superb range in sizes to suit all purchasing needs from gifts to self-treat. Our flexibility allows us to create bespoke packaging for retailers on the ground, inflight, on cruise ships or in border shops.
“We would be very happy to hear from any agents or distributors who may be able to work with us in specific regional markets.”
Underlining Almahdi Sweets’ broad consumer appeal, Arslan said: “We’re looking at packaging that presents our products in a far more international light – these are tasty, indulgent, and healthy sweets that can be enjoyed wherever consumers find themselves – not just if they happen to visit Israel.”
Almahdi Sweets was established two years ago and has built up a distribution network in Israel through hotels, gourmet restaurants and supermarkets, with sales exceeding US$1 million.
