BALADNA DAIRY
TEACHING SELF-SUFFICIENCY
BALADNA DAIRY
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BALADNA DAIRY
TEACHING WE LEARN HOW A QATARI DAIRY IS BECOMING AN EXEMPLAR OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROJECT MANAGED BY: HAYDEN TURNER
Just to the north of the Qatari city Doha, spread over an area of 2.5 million square metres, sits the Baladna Dairy. This state-of-the-art facility provides enough capacity to house 24,000 cows in a comfortable and well-conditioned environment, allowing them to reach their production capacity in comfort. Baladna Dairy’s farms have been specifically designed to mitigate significant changes in climate, protecting their cows while giving each animal sufficient space to move freely.
T
he animals are milked through a modern mechanism using milk quantity readers. The milk is then put through Baladna’s onsite factory that offers filling and packaging, as well as production facilities for dairy products including cheese and sweets such as Halawat Al-Jubn and Majuqa. This is all done in aid of Baladna Dairy’s mission, ensuring customers’ wellness through offering natural, nutritious and tasty foods and
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beverages while maintaining the most rigorous food safety and biosecurity protocols. In doing this, Baladna Dairy hopes to become the most trusted brand of nutritional foods and healthy beverages in Qatar, while also expanding into new markets. Baladna Dairy’s journey to achieve these goals is guided by a strong, founding set of principles. First among these is the importance of food security, ensuring the satisfaction of Baladna’s customers and exceeding their expectations. Next is a commitment to raising the level of veterinary care, using the best veterinarians and their expertise to promote the healthcare of its cattle. Taking care of its livestock is a clear priority for the company, which cooperates with experts in livestock breeding and production. In this way, Baladna Dairy is about to provide high-quality food products through the best international practices, while adhering to traditional
Qatari values: Showing pride in its achievements, hospitality and adhering to tradition, selfreliance and responsibility. But perhaps one of Baladna Dairy’s key values is sustainability, and in their pursuit of this aim, Baladna has become an example for the industry to follow.
AN EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW
Baladna has risen to the position it occupies now through adversity. The company was one of the key factors in helping Qatar achieve dairy selfsufficiency after a diplomatic crisis led to the country being blockaded by its neighbours. “Before the 2017 crisis, Qatar was in a situation where 90% of local dairy was being imported, so there was tremendous foreign reliance,” explained Malcolm Jordan Baladna’s CEO. Qatar is not the last country to face these challenges, but the lessons Baladna has learned are ones it is keen to pass on to others. Recently, the company has started working with the
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SUPREME INTERNATIONAL Supreme International is a proud partner of Baladna Dairy and was honored to be chosen as the Feed Processor supplier for this project. We are delighted to be partnered with Baladna Dairy in their journey building one of the most technologically advanced, productive dairy operations in the region. The challenges associated with securing global food supply are immense, our diverse international experience and our 25 plus years of TMR feeding in the region allowed us to bring an expertise and confidence in providing reliable, proven feeding technology to Baladna Dairy. We are excited to be part of Baladna Dairys’ mission of providing farm fresh, nutritious dairy products to the region markets and beyond. Supreme International brings with it over 65 years experience in manufacturing agricultural equipment. We were the company that 1st brought Vertical Feed Processor technology to the North American livestock feeding industry. An Alberta, Canada based head office and state of the art 25,000 sq.m manufacturing facility are complimented by a US Truck Mount Assembly facility and parts warehouse in Dodge City, Kansas that bring to the global market a full line of innovative products and intelligent feeding solutions.
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BALADNA DAIRY
government of Malaysia to help it establish its own dairy self-sufficiency. Indeed, Jordan believes that there are many parallels to be drawn between the challenges facing both Malaysia and Qatar. “Malaysia is actually in a very similar situation right now – 97% of the country’s dairy is being imported. It may have a lot of farms locally, but not many of these are for dairy,” Jordan said. “The climatic conditions in Malaysia are also presenting challenges we’ve more or less seen before, a situation where it is challenging for dairy farming and for obtaining economically viable yields. One of our main challenges there in the start is to create a suitable environment to thrive even when it’s hot and humid such that high yields, maybe around 40L per cow, can be obtained.” Qatar’s success in establishing its own food security has made it a go-to destination for other countries that are facing issues in that area, and Malaysia in particular had reached out to the Qatari government before Baladna was involved. “We are now working with the government-run Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (FELCRA) on this project – FELCRA has about 250,000 hectares of farmland currently mainly used for palm oil and we’re at the planning and development stage right now, finalising our business case,” Jordan has explained. “We’ve got some suitable sites in mind and worked out arable crops to feed cattle and other details, so will be announcing the agreement formally in the next few months – progress has not been helped by the pandemic,
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to be honest, but we’re definitely still committed to the project.” Malaysia may be only the beginning of the journey for Baladna, however, with many other locations across South East Asia and Africa looking to establish self-sufficiency. The need for this kind of guidance has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also driven a number of other consumer trends across the food and beverage industry in Qatar and the Middle East as a whole.
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BALADNA DAIRY
“Apart from the underlying trends which have remained unchanged such as quality, freshness and taste, we now see a lot more cooking at home and demand for local products,” said Jordan. “The local aspect especially has been growing for a bit, but we expect this to be amplified much more moving
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forward post-COVID-19 now that people are aware about the importance of food security.” Baladna sees itself as having a significant responsibility when it comes to food security within Qatar, and even before government COVID-19 guidance came in, it was taking every precaution. This
meant appointing crisis teams to drastically increasing the company’s safety stock levels in case of disruptions to supply routes. Baladna Dairy increased its stock of milk proteins and hydrocolloids to last six months, and cattle feed to last a year.
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NEW PROSPECTS
As well as sharing what they have learned, Baladna’s people are also open to learning new things themselves, and the company has launched 80 new product SKUs over 2020 to keep up with the latest trends. These new products span across every category from milk to yoghurt to creams and more. “We’ve already launched 50 of these new SKUs, and 30 more will be launched over the next few months,” Jordan has said. “Especially before Ramadan, that’s when some of the most major launches such as cooking creams and whipping creams will come so people can cook for the festival season. We’re also dabbling into the juices category and have 100% mango and guava juices with no sugar added, as well as long-life juices with a six to nine-month shelf life.” We cannot wait to see what they do next.
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BALADNA DAIRY
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