Fresh perspective

zoom

FARGHAL: The biggest challenge we face is balancing supply and demand.

Amr Farghal, GM for Fonterra Africa-Middle East, discusses expansion into new markets.

What have been the most recent additions to your product portfolio?

Our product portfolio is filled with many ready to use dairy products and solutions, which are specifically tailored for the foodservice industry. This includes products from our iconic brand Anchor.

The brand's butter range comes in a number of different formats including 25kg, 10g portions and pastry sheets. We also have a top Mozzarella product that offers magnificent stretch and comes in the form of a block, frozen or shredded.

We also have a strong range of cream products, which includes culinary, whipping and non-dairy solutions. Looking ahead, we are adding a range of world-renowned hard and soft Swiss and Italian cheeses to boost our offering to customers.

What is the current scale of your company?

Fonterra is the world's largest exporter of dairy products, exporting 2.5 million tonnes of products annually. We process 20 billion litres of milk annually from around the world and sell products in more than 120 countries.

Our regional head office for the Middle East is based in Dubai, and including our distributor partners we employ more than 500 people in this region. We have operations in the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Russia's Commonwealth of Independent States.

The Middle East offers excellent growth prospects for Fonterra's consumer business, which will give us a lot of scope to expand our business operations; it is a rapidly growing region that is fast developing a taste for our dairy products.

How would you sum up the company's strategy for growth?

At Fonterra, we place a lot of emphasis on our customer-partnering initiatives. Our approach is an inclusive one, where we work closely with our customers to understand their specific needs and what drives their business.

We believe this approach to the market differentiates us from our competitors and stands us in good stead for the future. We are well placed and have strong market presence in all the markets we operate, including the UAE, Oman, KSA, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and more recently Jordan.

We have plans for further geographical expansion in the near future.

What are the main challenges in this region?

At the moment the biggest challenge we face is managing the balance between demand and supply. Over the past 12 to 18 months, the worldwide dairy industry has seen a huge increase in demand for our products while the supply side of the business has faced a number of challenges related to production.

At Fonterra, we strive to monitor and manage these influences as best as possible in order to ensure we have sufficient supply to meet demand. We have the benefit of sourcing high quality milk directly from New Zealand.

Print | Email | Discuss this article |

USER COMMENTS (0 COMMENTS)

POST A COMMENT

CLICK HERE TO POST A COMMENT

Add your Comment All posts are sent to the administrator for review and are published only after approval. ArabianBusiness.com reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic.
Name *
Remember me on this computer
Email *	(Your email address will not be published)
City
Country
Subject *
Comment *
Notify me of further comments
Security Code *
Please click post only once - your comment will not be published immediately.