Gummi Bear sweets are to be made gelatin free enabling sweet giant Haribo to access the spending power of Jews and Muslims. British entrepreneur Neville Finlay is working with German sweetmaking company Haribo to sell the gelatin-free sweets abroad in a market potentially worth £1.4 billion annually, Allan Hall writes in an Associated Press report. Israel, Jewish communities in America, and Muslims in the Middle and Far East are seen as among the likely customers for the Gummi Bear, first produced in Austria in 1922. The gelatin-free bears cost 20% more to manufacture and a 40-ton experimental batch has recently been shipped to the US and Israel after months of attempting to get the consistency just right. Finlay will market the gelatin-free bears under his own label of Finlay's Finest. Showing a clear sign of confidence in the new product Haribo is to open a kosher plant in Turkey later this year to service Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia.
