Nadec

The National Agricultural Development Company (Nadec) was established by Royal Decree in 1981 in order to lessen Saudi Arabia's dependence on agricultural imports, since then it went through successive rapid development phases placing the now Nadec Group as one of the largest agri-food company in the Middle East/Africa region and the world. Nadec is a joint stock public company with 600 million Saudi Riyal equity capital.[3] The Saudi Arabian government owns 20% of the company's shares, while the rest is publicly traded. The Nadec Group is organized into two separate business units, Nadec Foods for consumer products ad Nadec Agriculture for Agricultural produce.

Today, Nadec Foods, led by its MD & Chief Executive Officer, Eng. Abdulaziz M. Al-Babtain, offers more than 200 product SKUs from fresh milk to laban, from yoghurt to cheese, and a wide range of fruit juices.

Nadec Foods is one of the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the world where all key activities needed to run a dairy business are managed in-house, including the milk production coming from six farms that host around 60,000 cows, two processing plants that produce over 1.5 million liters of milk per day, production of a total volume of 350 million liters, 200 trucks for primary distribution to reach the 50 depots and distributors across the Middle East and North Africa region, 800 van sales trucks with a sales force of 2,000 people to reach 35,000 retail customers and 5,000 catering clients.

In 2018, Nadec acquired Danone's venture in Saudi Arabia (Al Safi Danone).[4]

Agricultural production is one of the most important activities in the company and dovetails with the Kingdom’s aim of increasing food self-sufficiency and less reliance on imports. The agricultural part of the business provides a range of different products; from onions, potatoes and fruits to olives, wheat, corn and alfalfa, as well as other nutritional animal fodder which is used to feed the dairy cows on the farms.

Fruits include peaches, apricots and plums, whereas vegetables are potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Other crops such as wheat, clover, shami corn and Rhodes grass are grown on thousands of acres of land across four major projects in Haradh, Wadi Al-Dawasser,[5] Hail and Al Jouf.