Bringing camel milk to the world

CAMEL milk is fast becoming a rich and healthy ingredient for the finest gourmet products. Artisan milk chocolates like those by Dubai-based company, Al Nassma Chocolate LLC, are reaching distant shores, with more markets expected to open up. In this exclusive interview, Patrick Dorais, director of Sales, shares the company’s history, challenges and plans.

What is the story behind Al Nassma products?

The company was established in October 2008, but the development process, from the idea to the market launch of the brand, including finalising the recipe for the chocolate took almost four years. Even though with Georg Hochleitner from Salzburg and Wolf Zieger from Vienna, the two experts in the field we worked with, it took more than two years to achieve the perfect mixture.

We work with our sister company, the Emirates Industry for Camel Milk & Products (EICMP), which is also the sole supplier of camel milk powder to ‘Al Nassma’. EICMP runs the world’s first camel farm that is capable of delivering the consistency in taste and quality of camel milk needed for a successful chocolate production.

To date, the annual production capacity of Al Nassma has reached 100 tonnes. We have recently announced new points of sales for our premium camel milk chocolate in France, Austria and Qatar and our performance is strong on the Asian market.

How much has Al Nassma grown since then?

We have seen a remarkable development and growth. Some 130+ years after milk chocolate was first introduced, we are opening up a new category and are still today recognised as being “the first and finest camel milk chocolate” provider. Initially, we were selling our chocolates locally via our own chocolate shop located at the camel farm of our sister company, EICMP. Still to this day we believe it is the only full-fledged chocolate shop located in the desert.

The consumer response to our premium product was tremendous and encouraged us to seek further distribution partnerships with various luxury hotels in the UAE and Dubai Duty Free quite early on. A crucial milestone for us was stepping out of the UAE and going global. In July 2009, Al Nassma Chocolate kicked off collaboration with UPS, enabling us to sell and deliver our premium chocolates to customers around the globe.

At the same time, we also launched in Japan, and sales in this market have been growing year-on-year. We are present during the key Valentine’s Day season in 15 to 20 top department stores throughout the country and have a permanent presence in Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. Double-digit growth continues year-on-year and we are now spearheading our European expansion, with new listings in Galeries Gourmandes in Paris, Meinl am Graben in Vienna and a few other top locations to be announced in the coming months.

The duty free/travel retail channel of distribution is also a key priority, we have now successfully launched regionally in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Muscat, Sharjah and will soon be commencing operations in Saudi and Malaysia.

What sets the brand apart from its competitors?

What ultimately sets us apart from other chocolate brands is our core ingredient, camel milk. It gives our chocolate this unique smooth and silky taste with a hint of saltiness. We select all of our ingredients carefully to assure the finest qualitAir Jordan XI 11 Low