Savola Group - SAVOLA

Activities

The Savola Group was founded in 1979 as a small company, engaged in importing and refining vegetable oil for selling purposes. The company has gone through immense diversification and expansion and is today, ranked as number 9 amongst the list of top 100 companies in Saudi Arabia. The company is a publicly listed company and is headquartered in Jeddah. The company operates in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey) region and is now known to be a leading strategic investment holding group that has marked its presence in food, as well as retail sectors. In the food sector, the company engages in the manufacturing and sale of edible oils, sugar and pasta products, whereas in the retail sector, the company is engaged in different hyper and super markets' operations. Other than directly engaging in these two sectors, the company also has impressive investments in other leading publicly-listed Saudi companies such as, Almarai (30%), Herfy Foods (49%), Kinan Real Estate (23%) and Jordanian Tameer Company (5%). Savola is known to be one of the leading companies occupying 62% of the market share of the edible oils market and 68% of the market share of the sugar market in Saudi Arabia. In 1998, Savola decided to merge with Al-Azizia Panda United which is a famous retail chain in Saudi Arabia, and because of this decision both the parties have benefitted enormously. Some of the leading brands of the Savola Group include, but are not restricted to: Afia Oils, Al Osra Sugar, Al Malikah Pasta, Al Rawabi Ghee and Italiano Pasta. The company that started off with 200 employees today has approximately more than 10,000 employees working for it. In the retail sector, the company operates 166 retail outlets. Since 2015, the company has started focusing even further on its already massive product portfolio and has entered the sea food and baked goods market too. Recently, the Savola Group completed a successful accelerated book-built block trade for 16 million shares in Almarai Company to its international, regional and local investors. This accelerated book-built block trade is said to be a benchmark for future block trades on the Saudi Stock Exchange.