Setting Trends in the Bakery Sector

Source：Ringier Release Date：2011-06-05 192

Switz Group’s Saudi Masterbaker isn’t content with filling demand for breads and baked goods, but rather is intent on leading the market, writes RIA MENDOZA

Saudi Masterbaker pioneered in the market for sambosa leaves, which it produces from high-grade, imported wheat flour using an automated process

THE simple illustration of a baker serving bread is one of the most common images that can be seen in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It represents a household name in the baked goods category – that of Saudi Masterbaker, a company under Switz Group that has been in business for almost three decades in the Kingdom.

The company started in the early 1980s when Indian businessman and visionary, Fakhruddin Khorakiwala, first travelled to the Middle East and discovered the huge potential for commerce the region has to offer. He identified a niche in the baking industry and established Switz Group, a bakery value chain carrying products from baked goods to ingredients to operating industrial bakeries and branded retail shops.

“There were about eight people [in the company]. The main products were ready-to-eat meat puff pastry, or pattice, and pound cakes. The areas we initially served were Dammam and Al Khobar,” recalls Taizoon Khorakiwala, current chairman of the Saudi-based company Switz Group, and son of Fakhruddin Khorakiwala.

It was also around that time that Taizoon went to KSA to help in the family business. “In January 1980 I came on a trip to Al Khobar to draw a marketing plan for our bakery there and stayed, as my cousin was fed up and wanted to quit,” he shares.

“It was quite a chaotic market. Shortages were plenty; there were no telephones, poor roads, monopolistic suppliers and basic products. Government processes were opaque and visas were at a premium. Getting even basic things done was very difficult,” Taizoon describes those early years.

These challenges, however, did not deter the founders. The Khorakiwala family, after all, was no stranger to the bakery industry. Back in the 1950s, the family started Monginis, a popular chain of cake shops in Mumbai. So instead of quitting, they worked around the rough edges of the country and eventually earned the great margins they had set their sights on.

Through the years, the product line expanded from the original meat puff pastry and pound cakes to include a variety of cakes, sambosa leaves, and Garameesh rusks, which are available in its original form, whole wheat and cakes.

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