RIYADH, 9 May 2007 — Major retailers have stepped up efforts to create and establish their own labeled-products and brand them especially for the Gulf states, where private labeled goods account for only six percent of all commodities and around 15 percent of total grocery sales. “In Saudi Arabia, this figure has gone up and the private-labeled products now account for 17 percent of the total goods sold,” Maher Assaf, Al-Sadhan private label manager, said here yesterday.
Assaf said “the Saudi market has become more competitive than ever before, and the market is now more open to competition from international, regional, and local retail and food chains.”
The consumers in the Gulf countries have repeatedly called on the producers and traders to provide basic information required by law to appear on labels of all products. Several regulatory authorities have also made it clear that the name of the product/products should be sufficiently precise to inform the purchaser of the true nature of the food. All the ingredients of the food, headed by the word “ingredients” (or a phrase including that word), must be listed in descending order. Referring to the role played by the local Al-Sadhan Trading Company, Assaf said that Al-Sadhan is one of the major retailers operating in Riyadh. “We have launched our own private grocery brands called Baraka and Lily with high quality and reasonable price to ensure a wide public acceptance,” he said. Assaf said that “this project to develop our own labels was started only six months ago to cater to the growing need for good quality products, especially grocerr, at reasonable prices, he noted.
“It started with the idea to create a complete line of products for customers that are not only price conscious but also looking to satisfy their needs for high quality safe products,” said Assaf, adding that “it was never about competing with the leading brand names already sold at Al-Sadhan, instead our goal in to create these brands to provide customers a variety of guaranteed quality items at affordable costs”, Assaf explained.
“Baraka oil and Lily tissue are perfect examples of this, since they currently sustain the highest sales within their product range,” he said. “Although the company is facing many fabrication, packaging and legal issues, we are still continually introducing new products, which are manufactured locally or in other Levant countries. “Our customers will soon realize that they can save up to 35 percent, while buying Al-Sadhan labeled products, compared to the same top premium brands.” Al-Sadhan will soon launch many new food products including meat, tuna, honey, tomato paste, powdered juice mixes, powdered milk juice syrups, pasta, rice, oats, dry fruits, and canned foods.
