The Saudi Arabian Mining Company "Maaden" has strengthened its international presence by announcing a new regional office in South Africa, during the African Mining Conference "Indaba 2022", which will be held from 9 to 12 May in Cape Town, South Africa.
Ma’aden had previously strengthened its presence in the African market in 2019 by acquiring the fertilizer distributor in Mauritius, “The Meridian Group”, one of the largest fertilizer distributors in Africa. Today, Maaden has a network of operations across East and Southern Africa, extending from Malawi to Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Zambia has a market share of 35-65% in the four countries, and besides Meridian Group's regional distributions, Ma'aden's direct market share is 48% in both Eastern and Southern Africa.
Commenting on the opening of the office, Maaden CEO Robert Willett said: “We are pleased to strengthen our international presence through a new regional office in South Africa. Our announcement of the office reinforces our commitment to the African agricultural market, as it represents an important market for us to achieve strategic growth in Fertilizers field, and it is also part of our long-term plan towards Ma’aden’s growth to become one of the best mining companies in the world.”
He added: "Africa is one of the fastest growing agricultural regions in the world and will generate nearly 30% of the global demand for phosphate fertilizers over the next decade, and most of this demand will come from eastern and southern Africa, which are areas close to Saudi Arabia, which will allow us through our office What is new is to provide better service to South Africa and its neighboring countries, in addition to providing supply chain solutions to farmers, in conjunction with increasing the volume of our phosphate production in the near term in order to support food sustainability programs in a number of African countries.”
It is noteworthy that Maaden's fertilizer production business comes through two huge complexes with a production capacity of 6 million metric tons per year, and as one of the largest fertilizer suppliers to South Africa, Maaden is a major contributor to stabilizing food security.