Strategy and Performance

The Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait, have some of the highest per capita poultry consumption rates in the world. Poultry markets across the region continued to grow during the year in review, driven by a booming poultry industry particularly in Saudi Arabia, growing health consciousness, and also the growth of the foodservices industry.

Key Market Trends and Demographic Changes

The poultry market continued to experience strong growth despite fierce competitiveness in 2025, adding more downward pressure on pricing and profit margins as a result of new producers emerging in the market. Market growth is largely fueled by high local consumption, a growing foodservices industry, as well as government support to achieve the Kingdom’s food security goals. The market’s key segments are fresh and frozen poultry, with consumers shifting more towards fresh poultry options. The poultry supply in the Kingdom has been generally consistent and expanding, driven by significant investments made in increasing domestic production capacity to meet self-sufficiency goals, supported by a substantial volume of imports continuing to enter the market. Other Gulf countries such as the UAE and Kuwait also continue to experience volatility in the poultry market driven by import reliance and increased production costs. Overall, the GCC market for poultry continued to grow, but with intense competition among players to gain market share through lowered pricing, and the potential for oversupply as a result of increased local production and persistent import flows.

Approximately X 7 billion was allocated from Almarai’s X 18 billion investment plan to expand poultry operations, and unlock growth opportunities within the category. Our poultry business continued to grow in both volume and revenue in 2025, as capacities from new expansions came online during the year in review, enabling us to process over 300 million birds at the close of the year, the highest ever volume of birds processed to date.

A Breakdown of Our Big Bucket Investments

The main objective of Almarai’s poultry expansion program is to strengthen our position as the poultry industry leader in the Kingdom and other GCC countries. With the commencement of operations of our new farming sites at Al-Jawharah and Al-Basateen in 2024, we were able to substantially increase our capacity through higher input volumes of birds in 2025. This accelerated strategic expansion of our capacity saw our poultry business growing from 260 million birds last year to over 300 million birds during the year in review, a volume that will be supported by a second processing plant in the Al-Jawharah site that is scheduled to come online by the end of the year. At the close of 2025, our daily processing figures grew from 950,000 to over a million birds per day. The new processing plant aims to increase our production supply, providing us with greater leverage to drive profitable growth in the coming year. With this, we remain on track to reach our strategic goal of doubling the Almarai poultry capacity to 450 million birds annually by 2028.

Furthermore, our new facility in the Al-Jawharah site will also enable us to process over 8,000 tons of meat for frozen value-added poultry products annually, targeting both B2C and B2B buyers; a growing demographic of consumers with a preference for convenience, and Saudi Arabia’s rapidly growing foodservices sector, with a high demand for diversified poultry items to meet evolving industry needs. We will also explore opportunities to export our frozen products to the larger Arab world when such prospects emerge.

We continued to meet the significant and growing demand for product innovation by consumers in 2025, expanding the fresh poultry portfolio of both our premium brand Alyoum and value brand Bashayer, while also increasing our share in the value-added poultry segment by introducing new ready-to-cook products.

New Products Introduced in 2025

• Bashayer Whole Chicken Frozen Range
• Leak Free Whole Chicken pack format
• Alyoum Ready to Cook (Cookly) Chicken in 3 flavors (butter chicken, teriyaki, and barbeque)
• Marinated Whole Chicken Pepper Yoghurt Flavor

We continued to engage with our consumers through strategic campaigns and marketing activations, strengthening our market presence and raising consumer awareness of the quality and nutrition of our products. We enabled greater visibility for our products through branding initiatives, with our highly successful award-winning Sara and Mama Sara campaign.

Awards Won by the Poultry Business in 2025

• Best Video Storytelling campaign at the ATHAR Saudi Festival of Creativity
• Alyoum recognized by Brand Finance Saudi Arabia 100 (2025 Report) as the Fastest Value-Growing Brand in the Food Category

The poultry business vertical aligns with Almarai’s overarching Sustainability Pillars, and contributed towards achieving the company’s sustainability goals and targets during 2025. Guided by a comprehensive quality framework that covers our entire poultry operation, we run more than 60,000 tests annually across our processing operation to ensure products meet Almarai’s benchmark quality and food safety standards. We maintain the highest animal welfare and biosecurity standards, with responsible sourcing of the highest quality poultry feed. Our foray into packaging innovation resulted in the launch of new trays for poultry products made out of HPET (HDPE), one of the most highly recyclable and cost-effective plastics. A fully sealed bag that is leak-free was also launched in the UAE market to ensure further food safety. Our facilities continued to focus on water management, optimizing and reducing water consumption across every aspect of our operations. We focused on waste management by developing byproducts and converting waste into sustainable solutions. Our solar energy agenda also continued during the year in review, as part of Almarai’s climate change initiatives.