The executive president of Hudaim Company for Dates, Al-Tuwaijri fashioned Al-Raid Club of Buraidah into one of the leading football clubs in the Kingdom when he was president. Today he is the honorary president of its board of directors and occasionally dabbles in sports while concentrating in farming, manufacturing, marketing and processing of dates.

He sees dates as one of the main agricultural sources of revenue that can contribute substantially to the national economy if tapped properly. Al-Tuwaijri’s all-round abilities in dates production lend credibility to this statement.

On marketing, he emerges as a cool strategist; on farming, he is a researcher and scholar who knows anything and everything about date palm trees and various phases of their cultivation until harvest; on business, he brings a unique quality in his explanation about the ways and means of selling the product; and on the industry, he has novel ideas. In a nutshell, Al-Tuwaijri’s life revolves around the dates industry.

His primary concern is the dismal position of Saudi Arabia at international dates fairs as well as the lack of an export strategy despite its stature as one of the leading dates producing countries in the world. He called on the Kingdom to do what New Zealand did to make the kiwi fruit internationally recognizable.

Al-Tuwaijri said providing dates as aid to countries afflicted with natural disaster could go a long way in enhancing the international presence of Kingdom’s dates.

He also urged the setting up of permanent international exhibition pavilions in Makkah and Madinah to market the product among millions of pilgrims. And as a marketing move, he said a 10 kg bag of dates could be distributed free to the pilgrims.  Referring to his association with the industry, he said: “I entered the industry 20 years ago, precisely in the Hijri year 1412. At that time, a number of leading traders were controlling Buraidah’s traditional date market. My new marketing strategies and methods, as a young man, gave a new impetus and energy to the industry. And I grew in this industry,.”

“Soon I became a member of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Qassim,” he added. Al-Tuwaijri served as deputy chairman of the National Dates Committee for 16 years. “I left the post to concentrate fully in agricultural investment and manufacturing.”

Recollecting his first experiment in the field as an assistant to his father, Al-Tuwaijri said: “Our farm was located in a village, west of Buraidah, and the villages in the region are generally known as date palm oasis. I began helping my father by tending palm trees, and virtually inherited the trade from him.”

Al-Tuwaijri said Saudi dates have the potential to penetrate the tables of nearly every household across the world. It is essential to work out marketing strategies for export of the finest varieties of our product to various parts of the world, especially highlighting its nutritional and medicinal values, he said, while adding: “For this, the private sector needs government support. The government can also take some other measures such as adding dates to the aid being sent to victims of natural disasters, while also featuring in any international fairs in which Saudi Arabia is taking part. Recently, Saudi exhibitions were held in Italy, India and some other countries, but dates were nowhere to be seen at these fairs.”

Al-Tuwaijri also stressed the need for marketing dates through the annual tourism and shopping festivals. “I hope there would be separate pavilions for displaying varieties of dates at the tourism and shopping festivals. I expect that the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, headed by Prince Sultan bin Salman, would take an initiative to make dates pavilion an essential part of the festival,” he said.

Referring to the presence of Israel in international dates fairs, he said: “Israel produces only about 12,000 tons of dates. This could be less than the production from a single leading farm in the Kingdom, such as that of Al-Rajhi in Buraidah. But their presence is there at almost all international fairs as well as at food festivals throughout the world.”

“Though Saudi Arabia is producing more than 445 varieties of dates, including 36 finest ones, their presence at international fairs is comparatively nominal,” he added.