Major food packaging and machinery makers who attended a just-concluded food fair in Taipei are looking forward to more overseas orders in the second half of this year, the fair organizer said Monday. 'There were many more foreign buyers visiting our booth than in previous years, ' Benison & Co. President Liao Ben-chuan said in a press statement. 'Therefore, I am very optimistic about orders in the next six months.' Aston Machinery Co. President Tu Shun-lung said in the statement that his company sold several machines during the food fair and that he believes future orders will continue to grow. Robert Ou-Young, chairman of Anko Food Machine Co., said that buyers from Japan, the United States, the Middle East and Eastern Europe placed orders for his company's products during the fair. He expected more orders from other buyers who visited his company's booth, and attributed the order growth to the recovering economy, according to the statement released by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the organizer of the event. The companies, however, did not provide the number of orders they received or the value of the orders in the statement. The organizer said that the four-day food fair -- which concluded on June 26 -- helped foreign buyers appreciate Taiwan's upstream and downstream food industry, with 295 domestic companies in 931 booths displaying various types of food machinery and equipment. Leo Couprie, one of the founders of Canada's Couprie, Fenton Inc., which has business partnerships in over 40 countries, told the organizer that his first visit to the food fair, now in its 20th year, was aimed at buying frozen vegetables and seafood from Taiwan. Describing the fair as very diverse, Couprie said he will assess the possibility of importing Taiwanese food products into Canada. Jozsef Rozsa, the managing director of Daisyland Hungary Ltd., said his company plans to buy canned green tea and other types of soft drinks from Taiwan and introduce them to central Europe. A total of 4,512 foreign buyers visited the food fair, up 5.67 percent from last year, with major buyers coming from China, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. In addition, a record 959 exhibitors from 28 countries showcased various food products in 1,822 booths, the organizer said. 