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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Food industries centre to launch in Khazaen in Q1 2024

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MUSCAT, MARCH 11


Dhofar-based Salalah Mills, a publicly-traded company that owns and operates Oman’s biggest flour mill complex by capacity, says its new investment in Khazaen Economic City at Barka in South Al Batinah Governorate will be operational by the first quarter of 2024.


The company had announced last year that it is setting up a Food Industries Centre at Khazaen with an initial investment of RO 12.5 million — part of its strategy to expand its flour-based food processing industrial base.


Envisaged in the first phase of its implementation is an industrial bakery and multiple production lines for frozen and semi-baked pastries, it had stated.


“The production lines have been bought and Letters of Credit were opened,” said Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Saeed al Rawas, Chairman — Salalah Mills Co SAOG. “The project is expected to be in production by the end of the first quarter of 2024,” he added in the company’s newly published Directors’ Report for fiscal 2022.


The investment marks a significant expansion of Salalah Mills’ geographical footprint, which will now cover the northern part of the Sultanate of Oman. The company is also mulling a major expansion of its animal feed mill plant in Salalah, while also ramping up the capacity of its bagging unit.


Total revenue for fiscal 2022 climbed 25.5 per cent to RO 75 million, up from RO 60 million in 2021, the Chairman said.


”The increase is attributed to the higher selling prices due to higher cost of raw materials and higher sales quantity. The export revenues represented 51 per cent of the total revenues. The net profit made by the company was RO 1.68 million, showing an increase of RO 280 thousand compared to the previous year, representing a 20 per cent increase,” he stated.


Located at Raysut Industrial City, Salalah Mills has a flour milling capacity of 1,500 metric tonnes (MT) per day, effectively making it the largest miller in the Sultanate of Oman. Complementing this capacity is a complex of silos that can hold up to 161,500 MT of wheat, which is also the largest of its kind in the country.


In addition, the company owns three unloading machines at Port of Salalah with a discharge capacity of 1,500 MT per hour.


Significantly, Salalah Mills’ Food Industries Centre constitutes just one of multiple building blocks that will together constitute the ambitious new Food City project under development at Khazaen Economic City. Set to be the largest of its kind in Oman, the Food City initiative was first unveiled early last year.


Covering an area of over 1 million square metres, the Food City will be anchored by the Khazaen Central Fruit and Vegetable Market, as well as host a food industries zone earmarked for food packaging and distribution related activities, and a food processing cluster for value-adding investments. Total investments in the Food City are projected at over RO 40 million.


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