Santhosh Chandran
Doha
Dairy products consumers who have developed a taste for locally-produced milk in Qatar will not have to make do with the occasional imports much longer.
With Ramadan around the corner, the two biggest dairy farms in the country ” the Arab Qatari Company for Dairy Production and Baladna ” are all set to increase their outputs.
While the domestic dairy brands are readily available throughout the country and already meet most of the local demand, complete self-sufficiency in milk production is yet to be achieved.
Qatar, on an average, needs around 300,000 litres of milk per day, much of which was being imported before the start of the Saudi-led siege of Qatar. However, the unjust blockade turned out to be a blessing in disguise and spurred domestic efforts for self-sufficiency that has seen farms like Baladna flying in jet-full of cows from Europe and the US.
With the Arab Qatari Company and Baladna entering into their second stages of expansion, milk production in Qatar is expected to meet all the local demand.
"We are going to increase our production by more than 200 percent," Arab Qatari Company Manager Mohamed Elsadani told Qatar Tribune recently.
"Now we are in second phase of our expansion plan that was initiated after the blockade. In this phase, we are likely to import nearly 5,000 hybrid cows from the Netherlands."
Elsadani said the company is focussed on fodder cultivation as well as it wants to make the increase in milk production sustainable.
Baladna, which is Qatar's largest supplier of dairy products now, is also on a similar growth trajectory. Its Board Chairman Moutaz al Khayyat said Baladna will ship in more cows this year.
Last year, the farm airlifted around 3,300 cows from abroad and increased its daily output to 120,000 litres a day. It is in the process of bringing in 10,000 more cows this year.
It also added 200 more retail outlets to its network in 2017 and captured 60 percent of the country's retail dairy market.
As part of its expansion plan, Baladna has installed the largest milking stall in the Middle East that can milk 100 cows in one go.
The cows are being housed in newly built barns at the farm, which sprawls over 40 hectors of land in Al Khor area. Baladna is currently home to thousands of Holstein cows which were flown in from the US and Europe.