New school year gets Jeddah oven to a heat

Fresh baked-bread gives the back-to-school season a special favor. As bakeries in Jeddah gear up for a flourishing season, ovens are working full speed to meet the increasing demand of bread lovers. The new school year season left high number of parents frequenting bakeries to buy their children’s main breakfast component.
The high demand for bread increased the bakeries’ sales to more than 50 percent with more revenues expected as the season unfolds. Fayez Hamada, chairman of the Bakeries Committee in Jeddah, said an increasing turnout was noticed at different bakeries at the school started on Sunday.
Hamas said bakeries prepared for the annual high season by increasing the production of white bread and black whole wheat bread which are equally demanded by customers. The season’s best seller is the white bread called samoli which is shaped like a roll and used to make breakfast sandwiches for school students.
Mohammed Al-Nami, a father of four girls and 3 boys, told Arab News samoli bread is back on the top of the food list, “during summertime, breakfast wasn’t an important meal of the day as children used to wake up late, but now we’re back to the regular routine,” he said. Al-Nami added that he buys around four Saudi riyals worth of Samoli bread everyday in addition to pastries to send with his children to school.
Meeting twenty-five million Saudi customers’ apetitte left bakeries in need to produce no less than fifty million bread loafs of samoli, shami and asmar bread.
Hamada told Arab News the Bakeries Committee is working to enhance the bakeries capacity. “We’re holding discussions with training institutes to hold high-quality crafts training programs for Saudis to master the work at bakeries,” he said, explaining that bakeries won’t be able to continue working without hiring at least two Saudis for every team of twenty expats.
Bakeries were able to remain financially stabile in the current period due to the governmental subsidies on flour. Large quantities of high quality European, Australian, Canadian and American wheat were sold at competitive prices. These wheat supplies come to support the policy of the General Organization for Grain Silos and Flour Mills of securing the area’s need of wheat and maintaining a strategic stock.
Hamada pointed out that Kingdom’s plans to stop grain production by the end of 2015 and will instead import wheat from foreign markets by 2016. In 2012 and 2013, the Kingdom’s import of wheat exceed two million tons. In 2013, wheat imports reached about 2.5 million tons in addition to 600 thousand tons of domestic production. In 2012, the total imports reached around two million tons and 780 thousand tons of local wheat. The average per capita consumption of wheat in the Kingdom reached about 241 grams per day, or about 88 kilograms per year.
The production is expected to increase during the upcoming Haj season and the opening of schools.