The plant will be Patchi’s biggest and also house 32,300 square-feet of warehouse space for shipments across the Gulf, said Oussama Choucair, chief executive of Patchi UAE. When opened it will double the company’s manufacturing capacity from a current maximum of 5 tonnes a day to 10 tonnes in 2019.
"We have full confidence in the UAE economy and we believe there is potential for Patchi to achieve great things here,” Choucair added.
He said the support given by Dubai Industrial Park, where the factory will be built, and various government entities had persuaded the company to pick the emirate for the facility.
“We are very proud to have our products made in the UAE" he added.
Earlier this year the Lebanese-based chocolatier received halal certification from the Emirates Authority for Standardisation and Metrology.
The accreditation makes the luxury chocolate brand the first of its kind in the UAE to become halal certified, and the first halal-certified manufacturer at Dubai Industrial Park.
It has only recently started exporting to Thailand Duty Free from its UAE base, and is confident new markets will follow, thanks to its halal certification.
Patchi currently has more than 600 employees across 32 branches in the UAE and over 150 outlets in 23 countries around the world.
It runs three other chocolate factories in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, while its Syria plant has been shuttered due to the war there. It has four other manufacturing divisions in Lebanon, including a printing house for packaging.