SALIC to acquire terminal in Cairo

CAIRO/RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company (SALIC) is looking to acquire a grain terminal in Cairo, Egypt.

The firm’s managing director said that the SALIC is conducting due diligence on several projects in the Black Sea region.

“It is part of our mandate to give importance to logistics so we are looking at SALIC’s presence on that side in the form of a takeover or buying a grain terminal on the Black Sea,” Khaled al-Aboodi said.

The Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company was formed in 2011 to secure food supplies for the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter, through mass production and foreign investments.

He added that it was too early to name specific projects or locations.

Last week, the Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF and SALIC said they signed an agreement to team up in searching for investment projects in the Russian agricultural sector.

The announcement was made as Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Riyadh for the first time in over a decade.

Aboodi said SALIC would seek to bring in Russian wheat through state grain buyer Saudi Grains Organization (SAGO) should its investments in potential Russian wheat producers or farmland come to fruition.

Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, had long been seeking access to the Saudi market and in August the Gulf Arab state relaxed its bug-damage specifications for imports of the grain, opening the door to Black Sea origin wheat.

SALIC is looking to bring in Russian wheat for SAGO’s international purchasing tender if it makes a sizeable purchase of a Russian agribusiness firm engaged in wheat production.

“If the company has a good amount of production, that means it is cost effective enough to ship the grain, et cetera. Then we will target bringing wheat to Saudi through SAGO,” he said.

Reuters