Dubai: Dubai’s Essa Al Ghurair Investment Co. is considering bidding for flour mills that Saudi Arabia is preparing to sell to private investors.
The plants would add to flour mills it has in Oman and Lebanon, Essa Al Ghurair, chairman of his investment company Essa Al Ghurair Investment, said in an interview in Dubai on Monday. Saudi Arabia plans to reorganise its nine state-run flour mills into four companies to sell to the private sector, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
“We are studying this, this is something that could happen in one and a half to two years,” Al Ghurair said. “It’s not so difficult to adapt to the Saudi environment.”
Saudi Arabia’s last wheat farms just stopped production as part of a government effort to save the aquifers supplying them. For the first time, the nation will rely almost completely on wheat imports in 2016, a reversal from its policy of self- sufficiency.
Saudi Arabia’s nine flour mills have combined daily milling capacity of 12,630 metric tonnes of wheat, and process about 3.3 million tonnes of wheat a year, according to the USDA’s agriculture specialist in Riyadh.
The younger Al Ghurair’s investment company took a 40 per cent stake in a Dh120 million ($33 million) flour mill being built at the Sohar port in Oman. The rest is owned by Oman Flour Mills Co. Switzerland’s Buhler AG was selected to provide the equipment for the plant, providing a new type of flour in Oman, Al Ghurair said.
Essa investments is also considering opening a coffee roasting plant in Algeria and has an agreement with India’s Usher Agro Ltd. for a rice mill and beans plant at Sohar port, he said.
Saudi Arabia’s cabinet, in a meeting chaired by King Salman, imposed a 2.5 per cent fee on undeveloped land within city limits intended for residential or commercial use, it announced in a statement on state media on Monday.
The fee will be imposed as a percentage of the land’s value, reflecting the recommendation of the kingdom’s advisory Shura Council on November 17.
The government has been considering for years whether to use taxes to push owners into developing or selling unused land to help stem a housing crisis.
