Background
Almarai, with its headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is a leading company in the Middle East for food and beverages, including fresh and long-life dairy products.
In 2010, Almarai entered the Saudi Arabian poultry market by acquiring the poultry processor HADCO. Almarai created its own poultry brand Alyoum and set out to achieve a leading position within the local market by setting the highest possible standards processing in fresh poultry products.
The location of the Almarai facility is approximately 1.5 hours away from nearest large town in the middle of the desert. A whole ‘city’ had to be built from scratch to accommodate workers and staff in an ongoing expansion.
Challenge
For the processing of their by-products, Almarai needed a customised solution and asked Haarslev for assistance.
Haarslev was chosen for its reputation and capacity, its vision and understanding of Almarai’s core values and goals and for its ability to translate all of this into the most attractive and far reaching technical solution proposed to the company.
Solution & result
Haarslev focused on demonstrating that it was possible to have a ‘European level’ facility in Saudi Arabia, that produces end products of repeatable high quality, with an optimum return on investment (ROI) and long-term profitability. At the same time, the solution was designed to minimise the environmental impact, by using thermal oxidation equipment to eliminate odours and waste water from the process.
Based on the final approved technical solution, Haarslev was requested to install the facility on a full turnkey basis. Delivery and start-up were achieved on-time.
Today, Almarai is selling its end products from the Rendering facility to specialised European end-users in the pet food market. The plant is running reliably and matching an increasing capacity as production increases. Haarslev is also providing ongoing support on various smaller issues, all aimed at overcoming situations or anomalies that were encountered along the way.
