June 11, 2008
ARASCO to expand feed manufacturing capacity to 4 million tonnes
The Arabian Agricultural Services Company (ARASCO) has announced its intention to expand its manufacturing capacity of compound feed to 4 million tonnes per year.
The expansion is in response to the recent decision by the Saudi government to reform the subsidy system to encourage the animal feed industry and lessen dependence on barley, ARASCO''s chairman of the board Abdullah Alrubaian said.
The expansion will take place in two phases with the first already under implementation, ARASCO executive president Abdulmalik Alhusseini said.
The first phase, which is scheduled to complete by the end of the first quarter of 2009, aims to boost production capacity from 1.6 million tonnes to 3 million tonnes per year. The second phase would be implemented in 2009 to boost capacity to 4 million tonnes per year, which would elevate ARASCO into one of the top ten feed millers in the world.
Alhusseini said ARASCO would also expand its existing facilities in Damman and Al-Kharj rather than build new facilities so as to reduce investment cost and to cut the project period to less than a year.
Alhusseini said the expansion would enable ARASCO the livestock sector to substitute 2 million tonnes of forages and 3 million tonnes of barley.
Found in Riyadh in 1983, ARASCO provided services for the budding agricultural sector and has since evolved and grown to become one of the biggest national multi-business companies in Saudi Arabia. ARASCO operates along the food value chain with emphasis on feed milling, corn refining, broilers production and marketing, farm inputs and services, feed and food phosphates manufacturing among others.