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Al Ghurair Foods opens GCC’s first freshly-milled oats plant

DUBAI - Al Ghurair Foods, a leading Middle East foods manufacturer, on Monday inaugurated its Dh20 million state-of-the-art oats plant, which is set to be the only provider of freshly-milled oats in the GCC.

Essa Al Ghurair, Chairman of Al Ghurair Foods, and Mohammad A. Gello, Ambassador of Kenya to the UAE, pressed the button to start the canning process at the factory premises in the Jebel Ali free Zone.

With an annual manufacturing capacity of 33,000 tonnes, the new oats facility fits extremely well within Al Ghurair Foods’ offering, and falls in line with the company’s commitment to provide high quality healthy products.

The 6000 square meters plant comes to serve the rising regional demand from different industries on locally-manufactured oats. It is a valuable addition to Al Ghurair Foods’ series of milestones, standing as the region’s first of its kind, next to a huge flour plant with a daily 5,000 tonnes capacity and the Middle East’s largest oil refinery.

“This new facility not only serves the UAE, as a key international trading hub and the world’s third largest re-exporter of agricultural products, but also the wider GCC region, which has long been one of the biggest food import regions in the world, bringing almost 90 percent of food products in from other markets,” Essa Al Ghurair said.

Essa said that the freshly-milled oats factory will provide a healthy product that can be used in several other industries. This facility will generate a significant ripple effect, adding value to the operations of numerous wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers and other entities in the food services industry at both local and regional levels, he added.

“We are proud to be a major contributor to the local and regional economies and to develop local production facilities that can serve the region’s growing demand for multiple-use products such as oats,” he said.

Essa told Khaleej Times that Al Ghurair Foods would launch an education campaign to inform people of the health benefit of oats. The products will be exported to the region as well as to Africa, he said. He said that the presence of the huge number of international companies at the Gulfood 2011 exhibition proved that the companies wanted to bring in their products to Dubai and redistribute them in the region and beyond from the Dubai base.

Essa said that the disturbances in Egypt might have affected exports for a brief period but they are now coming back to normal. He said that trade was not affected by the situation in Libya and Algeria.

About the rising prices of raw material, Essa said that in a free market without government subsidies, the cost has to be passed on to the consumers. ‘The other option is to cut our costs wherever we can,” he said. Till date, oats were being imported, requiring a lead time of at least 5 to 6 weeks. The new freshly-milled oats plant, will ensure shorter lead times and flexibility of production according to customers’ needs. Oats produced in the UAE will be distributed to region to service the high demand across numerous industries including healthcare, cosmetics and food services.

According to Ibrahim Al Ghurair, Head of Business Unit — Oats, at Al Ghurair Foods, the facility is also a provider of a very healthy product with proven health benefits that help address several of the health issues in the UAE and the region, including obesity and abnormal cholesterol levels which are generating worrying rates of diabetes and heart diseases. 


business@khaleejtimes.com