Bus trip of one and half hours to neighboring Emirate state of Abu Dhabi to visit the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority and then Al GhurairFoods flour mills at the Jebel Ali port.
Abu Dhabi contributes about 60% of the UAE GDP and 90 % of this revenue comes from oil. They are highly industrialized and highly developed and show no signs of slowing down with new building and infrastructure in progress everywhere. Now I am beginning to understand the scale and thirst the world has for our iron ore. Upwards of 80% of the population are expats.
The Food Authority was established to ensure food safety, food quality and food research and development. We gave a PowerPoint presentation of the CBH Group which was again well received. We them went to an impromptu meeting with officials from the State Fund for Development and were informed of the new food security project which comprises of 50x 15,000mt at the Fujeirah port.
Our last stop was a tour of the Al Ghurair mill at Jebel Ali port. The tour was not extensive, but some quick facts : they import 1.5M mt of wheat ach year which about 120k is Australian, they mill and convert many other commodities to service countries across the world, one market is canola l into Europe. T is ok to import GM canola oil but not GM canola seed. Go figure !. Grain is stored in 24 x 11,000mt concrete silos, 19 meters in diameter and 54 meters tall with 300mm thick walls. The Government is planning to build a freight airport adjacent to the shipping port, with intention to guarantee movement of freight from ship to plane or vice versa in 30 minutes.
Trip observations so far :
Middle East millers want quality wheat but price is always king. These guys run highly efficient businesses and know exactly what they want and invariably get it. They are very friendly and accommodating hosts, however their lives appear to revolve around business, work and religion. They have incredible wealth. Australia is a small fish in a big pond. What CBH Group has is unique in the world grain industry and every group we have met has been genuinely impressed with our structure and the fact we have control over so much of the supply chain. I firmly believe any attempt to change this structure will only result in short term gain at the expense of long term stability and market advantage.
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