Organic, Green and Healthy Expo 2012: Opening Ceremony

The second Organic Green and Healthy Expo was held this year from 5 to 7 October 2012 at Tebet Green Mall. I received information about this event as well as a VVIP Invitation for attending the opening ceremony from Green Shop via email. I was so excited to attend this event as I’m always curious on organic products made in small and medium enterprises in Indonesia.

The opening ceremony was held on Friday, 5 October 2012 at 2pm by various speaker but most important was Ibu Yasmine Wiryawan – the wife of Indonesian Minister of Trade, Bapak Gita Wiryawan. I registered to attend this event with two other friends and we were confused how to get into the hall where the ceremony taken place. With no signboard and registration desk whatsoever, we were completely lost.  Fortunately, after we asked here and there, we found the hall – still without registration desk. It’s kind of free event for everyone…

The opening speeches were delivered by different parties, starting from the head of expo project, representative of KADIN, representative of Tebet Green Mall to Mrs. Yasmine Wiryawan. Mr. Christopher Emille Jayanata as the expo project head said that nowadays the usage of chemicals in food and non food industries increase significantly. This phenomenon leads to the higher risk of health and environment. The good news is the fact that customers now are more aware of the importance of consuming organic products. However, the campaigns of organic products are necessary to create more awareness; one of the campaigns is by having this Organic Green and Healthy expo.

Meanwhile, Mr. Elhamy Ellias as the representative of KADIN (Indonesian Chamber of Commerce) highlighted that the number of participants of this expo increase dramatically from only 40 participants in the first Organic Green and Healthy Expo in 2011 to more than 100 participants this year. Interestingly, even though most of participants are coming from food industries, there are more lifestyle products presented in this expo, such as skin care and fashion. He closed his speech by looking forward to the market extension of organic products both to local and international market.

Mrs. Yasmine Wiryawan in her speech underlined that organic lifestyle should come from home – even if not all products can be replaced by organic because of the limitation of its availability. Ingredients and materials to produce organic products are available abundantly in this country, but business players interested to organic products are still limited. The role of government – especially Minister of Trade, is to provide facilities for small medium enterprises in organic products with the intention that their business will grow and able to fulfill the increasing demand of organic products – as she quoted that the world wide demand of organic products is 20% and keep increasing.  Organic market is rising and promising. Mrs. Yasmine Wiryawan hit the gamelan gong as the sign that Organic Green and Healthy Expo formally opened.

After opening ceremony, I visited the expo that presented more than 100 booths offering many different organic products both local and imported. I will share it in my next posting.

Happy organic lifestyle!