Thursday 30 April 2009

Almarai prospers on diet of dairy

At what is claimed to be the world’s largest integrated dairy company, young men in white overalls hose down parlours while black-and-white Holstein cows stand patiently as milk is sucked from their udders.

It is a process that is repeated almost non-stop throughout the day. Almarai churns out 674m litres of milk a year from a herd of some 55,000 cows that are spread across six farms and milked four times a day.

The setting could not be further removed from the landscape of rolling green fields normally associated with dairy farming. These farms are in the midst of sprawling desert in the heart of Saudi Arabia. Outside temperatures can exceed 50°C in the summer and, rather than lush grass, the cows lie on sand.

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