Morocco-KSA: Cosumar’s new sugar refinery in Yanbu to start production in March

Morocco’s first sugar refinery Cosumar announced that production in its new refinery in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, will start in March this year.

The refinery in Yanbu is scheduled to start operating in March 2020, Cosumar group CEO Mohamed Fikrat told Reuters.

The Yanbu refinery, with a nominal capacity of 850,000 tons of high quality white sugar in different sizes targeting retail and industrial segments, will supply the Saudi market. The refinery is located in Yanbu Port, close to major Saudi cities, mainly Jeddah, Medina, and Mecca. The refinery will also supply the Mena region market, whose needs exceed 4 million tons per year.

The establishment of the new white sugar refinery, named Durrah sugar refinery, was announced in 2016, as part of a joint venture between Cosumar and the Saudi partners, Consolidated Brothers Company and Industrial Project Development Company, Wilmar, with Cosumar Group holding 43.27 % in the capital of the refinery.

Cosumar’s Morocco-based refinery exports 400,000 tons of sugar to 40 countries in Africa and in the MENA region.

«Exports represent between 20 to 25 percent of our turnover», Fikrat had said in a previous statement to the media. Cosumar imports half of its raw sugar needs from Brazil and produces the rest locally, he had said.

Cosumar has ambitious expansion plans and a strategic vision for the development and promotion of its export business, which will enable the Group to become a competitive regional agro-industrial player.

Set up in 1929, Cosumar employs 1, 700 men and women.