Most dairy companies in Saudi Arabia have ramped up their prices by up to 33 per cent.
These changes came into effect on Sunday, January 1.
The move comes at a time when the profits of some companies exceeded SR1 billion during the first nine months of last year.
The hike in prices of dairy products comes at a time when profits of some companies exceeded SR1 billion during the first nine months of last year.
Saudi dairy giant Almarai Company ascribed the hike to three core reasons-shipping costs, higher cost of product ingredients and increased fodder prices.
The company said that these factors have culminated in a tremendous increase the production cost in the recent past, which necessitated the adjustment of the prices to offset the costs.
The rate of increase in prices for consumers amounted to around 33 per cent on some products, as the prices of products that were previously sold at SR1.5 were raised to SR2, and the hikes included almost all dairy products present in the market.
The hike in prices of dairy products comes at a time when profits of some companies exceeded SR1 billion for most of 2022.
According to monitoring by Okaz/Saudi Gazette, the profits of a dairy company listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) during the nine months of last year amounted to more than SR1.4 billion, with an average daily profit of SR5.2 million, while the profits of another listed company amounted to about SR70.4 million during the same period, with an average daily profit of SR261,000.
The drastic price changes prompted consumers to demand the intervention of the Ministry of Commerce as happened 11 years ago following the raising of prices by a dairy company at the time. The demand caused the ministry to compel the company to revert the prices of some of its products to their original level.
