Either the economy is as bad as everyone fears it is, or Malaysians just love getting a quick, hot meal straight out of the microwave.
A new report shows that Malaysians consume 3.6 million packets of instant noodles. Every. Day.
That comes up to 1.34 billion packets of instant noodles getting slurped up every year, in Malaysia alone.
That’s … that’s a lot of noodles.
The new data was revealed today by Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd’s managing director Alois Hofbauer, who claims that his company’s super-popular Maggi brand alone accounts for 1.4 million packets of instant noodles being consumed by Malaysians daily.
Hofbauer added that due to intense demand from the local market, Nestle’s Maggi noodles factory in Batu Tiga, Shah Alam is working overtime to churn out enough instant mee.
The factory is being operated on a RM90 million investment, on which it produces more than two million packets of instant noodles for local and overseas consumption.
“With a history of over 100 years in Malaysia, Nestlé is committed towards investing in the country, and intensifying our marketing investment in the good times as well as during challenging economic periods because we believe in Malaysia’s vast potential for middle to long term growth,” Hofbauer told The Star Online.
We’ll bet.
Still, Malaysia isn’t the biggest consumer of ramen or ramen-like products in the world by far. That title goes to – surprise, surprise – China, who just last year chopsticked through a staggering 44 billion packets of instant noodles.
That counts for nearly half of the entire planet’s instant noodle appetite, which as of 2014 stood at 102 billion packets consumed.
Okay whatever pass the bawang goreng and remember to blow into the bowl before you slurp up the soup. Wouldn’t want to burn your tongue now, would you?
