Company aims to start production in 2017 to keep leading market position in Oman
Salalah Mills is already running at 100% utilisation of its 1,500 tonne/day capacity
Oman Salalah Mills’ board of directors has decided to raise the company’s paid capital and production capacity.
Acting on a feasibility study conducted by Expert House, the board has approved a plan for a new flour mill with a production capacity of 600 tonnes/ day. With a project cost of about OMR7.5m (USD19.5m), the mill is expected to start production in the first quarter of 2017.
Salalah Mills aims to raise its paid capital by 10% through a rights issue in the first quarter of 2016, at the price of OMR0.750 per share.
The planned expansion in production is in line with a strategy to promote the company as the biggest flour mill in Oman and one of the largest flour mills in the GCC and to exploit its earlier investment in increasing grain storage capacity and the discharge rate of wheat in the Port of Salalah.
Half of the cost of the new project will be financed by a loan facility from the machinery supplier and the other half by issuing new shares.
Salalah Mills Company’s production capacity currently totals 1,500 tonnes/day. But the company’s utilisation reached 94% utilisation last year and 100% in the first half of the current year. The new expansion will provide flour for growing demands in the domestic market and export
markets, where it is sold under the brand name ‘Al Khareef’, which the company markets as connoting premium quality.