Thai Halal Food Push Aims for $1.5 Trillion Export Goal
Thailand’s Office of Industrial Economics, together with the Food Institute, is promoting Thai halal food to global markets through R&D support and a pilot‑plant program to cut investment risk. The goal is to lift food exports to 1.5 trillion baht and raise the country’s share of the world halal food market from 2.1% into the top ten exporters by 2027. August food exports rose 5.9% to 128.4 billion baht, helping revise the full‑year forecast to 1.5 trillion baht despite an earlier decline.
The Office of Industrial Economics is pushing Thai halal food into world markets, highlighting R&D to cut investment risk and driving food exports toward 1.5 trillion baht after Thai food exports surpassed 1.01 trillion baht in the first eight months. Supachai Boonsiri, Director-General of the Office of Industrial Economics, said the agency is upgrading Thailand’s food-processing industry from using agricultural raw materials to high-value products, with emphasis on health foods, functional foods, biotech foods and halal foods, alongside R&D investment in technology and innovation to enhance competitiveness and expand export markets. In fiscal year 2026, it is working with the Food Institute to carry out a project to develop the capacity of Thailand’s halal food industry, aiming to raise production standards to align with Islamic principles and international market requirements while developing products that meet consumer health and safety concerns. A key mechanism is the Food Institute’s pilot plant, which helps entrepreneurs translate laboratory formulas into industrial-scale trial production and market test batches before investing in actual machinery, reducing technology risk and cost while controlling the production process and quality to meet food safety standards and FDA regulations. Supachai added that even though Thailand is an important global food producer, its share of the world halal food export market stands at just 2.1%, so the effort will focus on boosting readiness of entrepreneurs, especially SMEs, to develop high-standard, high-value products to increase sales channels and income, and to drive Thailand into the top ten global food exporters by 2027. Meanwhile, Food Institute Director-General Naiyada Hanchaisukhsakul said that although Thai food exports for the first eight months of fiscal year 2026 amounted to 1,014,195 million baht, down 5.2% due to Middle East conflict, US tariff uncertainty, import bans by trading partners, lower agricultural output and higher raw material costs linked to energy prices, August food exports rose to 128,411 million baht, up 5.9%, with ten of the fifteen main export food items expanding. The Food Institute therefore revised its full-year Thai food export forecast to 1.5 trillion baht, a contraction of 0.7% compared with the earlier projection of 1.4 trillion baht and a 7.2% decline, expecting year-end holiday orders and a favorable baht to support exports in the final four months. In addition, the Office of Industrial Economics and the Food Institute are jointly developing an intelligent halal industry information center and a dashboard-format database of Thailand’s food trade to enable entrepreneurs to monitor conditions, drill into product and target-market data, and use it to formulate export strategies aligned with trade opportunities.
