Doha News | 31 March 2024
Qatar’s Baladna to establish powdered milk farm in Algeria
by Fatemeh Salari
Since the 2017 GCC crisis, the Qatari agricultural company has expanded its brand locally and globally.
Qatari food company Baldana is signing an agreement with the Algerian government to establish a farm to produce powdered milk in the North African country, a source familiar with the matter told Doha News.
The Qatari agricultural company plans to inaugurate a farm that extends over 100,000 hectares and produces 200,000 tonnes of powdered milk annually.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune disclosed that the North African country is on the verge of signing an agreement with an “Arab partner” to start producing milk powder locally in pursuit of “self-sufficiency,” revealing that the farm will be made in Adrar, southwestern Algeria.
Qatar’s Baladna is the largest company in the country for milk and dairy production, emerging in the global market after the 2017 GCC crisis shifted the Gulf country’s production objectives.
Trading on the Qatar Stock Exchange since October 2019, Baladna has expanded its brand both locally and globally and is home to one of the largest cattle farms in the region — spreading over an area of 2.6 million square metres.
Last year in July, Baladna bought another division of shares in Egypt’s Juhayna Food Industries. The acquisition comes after the wholly-owned Qatari firm first raised its stake in Juhayna Food Industries to 10.1% in May 2022 in a deal worth QAR 2.5 million.
Publicly listed, Juhayna produces and markets dairy and juice products and has four production facilities across Egypt.
In August 2021, the big Qatari firm also signed a deal to produce dairy products in Malaysia.
Baladna agreed with Malaysia’s state-owned FELCRA Berhad and agriculture giant FGV Holdings to produce 100 million litres of milk yearly.
The agreement was set to create a dairy herd of 10,000 high-yielding milking cows, double the production of Malaysian fresh milk within two years (from the time of signing), and use the joint venture farm to support small rural farms by enabling them to build cattle fattening and animal feed farms by 2024.
