Work on one of the Gulf's largest poultry projects, A'Saffa Poultry Farms, was set to begin soon following the close of an initial public offering (IPO).
Two major pan-Arab financial institutions & Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) and the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development (AAAID) - are promoting the project near Thumrait in Oman's Southern Region. Other promoters are the Royal Office Pension Fund, Al Baraka Investment Company, Oman Gulf Company and Global Omani Investment Holding Company.
Al Baraka Economic Consultancy, which has an ISO 9001 certification, is managing the project. According to a market study it conducted, the poultry meat market in Oman depends to a very large extent on imports.
Consumption of poultry meat in Oman is estimated at roughly 60,000 tonnes per year, 70 per cent of which comes from abroad, mainly in frozen form. The dependence on imports has remained despite efforts to develop chicken meat production by medium and small chicken farms.
The RO11.4 million A'Saffa poultry project will be financed by way of RO5 million equity and RO4.4 million soft loans, the remainder coming in deferred payment/suppliers credit and commercial borrowings from financial institutions.
The promoters are contributing RO2.5 million of the equity, the other RO2.5 million coming from the IPO which was open to all nationals and organisations as well as all the Gulf states.
A'Saffa is AAAID's first venture in Oman. The organisation focuses on investing in agricultural development in the Middle East. Both the pan-Arab institutions have sizeable investments in two successful companies - Emirates Modern Poultry Farms and Al Rawabi Dairy Farms.
The project is the first integrated one of its size to be established in a desert area of Oman where humidity levels are low and the evaporating cooling system works much better. The mortality rate of birds was said to be high in the few projects that had been set up in the coastal areas.
A'Saffa will consist of parent bird farms, a hatchery, broiler bird farms and a veterinary department. There will be nine farms, each having six broiler houses. Other facilities it will have are slaughterhouses, a rendering plant, a feed mill, a power station, a laboratory, a cold storage and an effluent treatment plant. The parent bird farms are designed to hold about 100,000 birds while the hatchery will handle 15 million eggs per year. The broiler farms will have the capacity of housing 9 million birds per year. Al Baraka general manager Nelson Mathew was quoted by the local press as saying it would be fully integrated from start to finish and be similar in design and standards to the most modern plants in the world.
High-quality parent stock chicks are to be imported from Europe by air to produce fertile eggs for the hatchery. The hatched chicks will be transferred to broiler farms where they will be fattened in environmentally controlled broiler farmhouses. The project will have modern facilities including ones for processing and freezing. The fattened birds will be harvested manually, slaughtered and processed according to Islamic traditions.
