Baladna has grown its stake in the company over the course of nearly two years.

Leading Qatari dairy company Baladna bought another tranche of shares in Egypt’s Juhayna Food Industries, the company confirmed.

Baladna’s recent purchase of 600,000 shares was made on Monday, increasing the company’s stake from 10% to 15.03% in a transaction worth E£7.4m ($239,000).

During a a stock exchange filing on Friday, Baladna stated the company wishes to continue its expansion both within Qatar and internationally.

“Investment decisions are based on very detailed analysis of the market,” the filing read.

“[The] Egypt market, with a population [of] more than 100 million, is a large and promising food and beverage market. Being the market leader, Juhayna is expected to benefit most from the market growth with a strong distribution network.”

The 100%-owned Qatari firm first increased its ownership stake in Egypt’s Juhayna Food Industries in May 2022 to 10.1%, in a deal worth QAR 2.5 million.

Publicly-listed Juhayna produces and markets dairy and juice products and the company has four production facilities across Egypt.

In 2022 alone, Juhayna generated revenue of E£11.36billion, up 29% on a year earlier. The company’s net profit stood at E£638m, 21% higher year on year.

Baladna, based north of Doha, has three factories making dairy products, juices and packaging. In 2022, Baladna’s revenue increased by 27.5% to QAR 985.6 million. The company’s net profit, however, fell nearly 40% to QAR 80.6 million.

Baladna’s revenue increased 6.3% in the first three months of 2023 to QAR 254.4 million. Its net profit of QAR 20 million was down more than 20% from the same period last year.

Baladna investments

Baladna has continued to expand immensely both on a national and international level, especially since the 2017 GCC crisis shifted the Gulf country’s production objectives, prompting it to prioritise national production.

The company owns more than 24,000 Holstein cows on its 2.6 million square-metre facility with 40 state of the art barns and produces about 450 tonnes of fresh milk and juice products daily.

In February last year, Baladna signed an agreement to produce dairy products in the Philippines.

The project is expected to increase the Philippines’ local milk production by 120 million litres – a significant jump from the current 26.71 million litres.

In August 2021, the big Qatari firm signed a deal to produce dairy products in Malaysia.

Baladna agreed with Malaysia’s state-owned FELCRA Berhad and agriculture giant FGV Holdings to produce 100 million litres of milk yearly.

The agreement was set to create a dairy herd of 10,000 high-yielding milking cows, double the production of Malaysian fresh milk within two years (from the time of signing), and use the joint venture farm to support small rural farms through enabling them to build cattle fattening and animal feed farms by 2024.