Works for me with the current version of PDF::Table (0.9.6)  -  but not with an older version (0.9.3).

Also, note that $pdf->corefont("Helvetica", -encoding => "utf8") creates and embeds a font instance every time you make that call.  I.e., an optmization would be to create the font object just once

my $helvetica = $pdf->corefont("Helvetica", -encoding => "utf8");
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and then just pass the same reference to the individual cells

...
          $cell_props->[$j]->[$k] = {
                                    font => $helvetica,
                                    font_size => 15,
                                    background_color => '#FFCA00', #
                                    font_color       => '#fD4D4D', #
                                    justify => "left",
                                };
...
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This cuts down the PDF size for the sample code from 290k to 9k.