Business & Money | Monday 15 June, 2015 1:41 am |

People in Saudi Arabia waste 35 percent of bread produced in the country, said Agriculture Minister Abdul Rahman Al-Fadli.

“We have one of the world’s highest per capita consumption of bread,” he said.
Speaking to reporters after Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal launched one of the largest grain silos and flour mills in the region, he said the price of bread in the Kingdom is one of the lowest in the world.

He said the General Organization for Grain Silos and Flour Mills tries to strengthen the skills and efficiency of its workers by sending them for intensive training inside and outside the Kingdom, in preparation for its privatization.
The government established the organization in 1972 with a single branch with a capacity of 540 tons of wheat and production capacity of 135,000 tons annually. Currently there are 14 branches with a total capacity of 2.6 million tons.

Al-Fadli commended the government’s efforts to ensure adequate supply of flour and bread in the market at the lowest rate. “Saudi Arabia has won an award from the Food and Agriculture Organization for maintaining the lowest malnutrition rate,” the minister pointed out.
Abdul Rahman Al-Ruwaitie, director general of the organization, said the facility in Jamoom would have a capacity to store 250,000 tons of wheat and two flour mills with a daily production capacity of 600 tons each.

“The plant will supply more than 5 million bags of flour annually and 1.5 million bags of bran,” Al-Ruwaitie said.
The facility includes administrative buildings, sales offices, a laboratory and housing for employees.
Speaking about other advanced systems at the plant, he said it has an automatic operation and control system as well as a cleaning and packing system. The project includes a desalination plant and a power generation plant.

The Jamoom grain silos and flour mills are located about 18 km from Makkah. Covering an area of 962,700 square meters, the plant was established at a cost of SR819 million. It has a special system to unload 1,000 tons of wheat per hour.