KARACHI: The Organic Meat Company Limited (TOMCL), a major halal meat exporter to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), announced on Monday it had won a high-value contract of $3.9 million to export frozen boneless meat to the kingdom.
“We would like to inform you that The Organic Meat Company Limited has secured a high value contract for supply of frozen boneless meat with a multinational customer in Saudi Arabia,” the company said in a note to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).
This also makes the organization the first Pakistani company that has been approved by a multinational food processing firm for meat supply from Pakistan.
The Organic Meat Company added that the awarded contract was approximately $3.9 million under which the company would export 100 metric tons of frozen boneless meat every month for a year through sea routes to Jeddah.
The company has also received an approval from the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA).
“TOMCL has been contracted to supply frozen boneless meat to National Food Company (Americana), which is one of the most successful organizations in the Middle East. The group is considered one of the largest food manufacturing and distributing companies in the region,” read the company’s statement to PSX.
Its management officials noted that the export contract with a key market player in Saudi Arabia would boost trust among foreign food processors.
“It is good for Pakistan because it will increase the confidence of foreign food processors since this export contract implies that there are such companies in Pakistan who can supply quality meat to them,” Faisal Husain, the organization’s founder and chief executive officer, told Arab News on Tuesday. “This will also increase the share of Pakistani meat products in the Saudi market.”
Analysts say that despite the coronavirus pandemic, food exports from Pakistan have shown improvement and meat exporters are playing a major role in it.
“We have seen improvement in many export-oriented sectors in the past few months. Despite the virus, exports have improved in food and a few other sectors. Pakistan has a huge potential to export meat,” Muhammad Sohail, chief executive officer of Topline Securities, told Arab News, adding: “The Organic Meat Company, being one of the largest meat exporters, is playing a key role.”
Pakistan’s exports of meat and meat preparations stood at $103 million during the July-October 2020 period, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. In terms of quantity, the exports were 20 percent higher than the same period of last year.
Based in Karachi, The Organic Meat Company’s facilities are approved to supply products to Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Maldives, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
The company was incorporated in 2010 and raised about Rs800 million from initial public offering (IPO) at PSX to set up two new facilities to process and export offal to far eastern markets.
