Qatar’s Baladna Food Industries is teaming up with an arm of the World Bank to support Syria’s dairy industry.
In a statement yesterday (26 April), dairy group Baladna said it is working with the World Bank’s International Finance Corp. (IFC) as “part of broader efforts to strengthen food security, rural livelihoods, and job creation in a fragile and conflict-affected setting”.
The project will assess milk production capacity in Syria, including opportunities for consolidation, along with logistics bottlenecks and “compliance with environmental and social standards”.
Baladna and IFC will together assess “whether a sustainable, investment-ready dairy value chain can be rebuilt at scale”, taking a phased approach starting with analytical and field-based studies.
Marek Warzywoda, the CEO of Baladna, said: “Rebuilding food systems in fragile environments requires patience, discipline, and a willingness to start with fundamentals.
“By grounding potential future investments in practical realities on the ground, we aim to help restore domestic dairy production in a way that supports nutrition, creates jobs, and delivers long-term value.”
The statement described Syria as one of the world’s “most food-insecure countries” following years of conflict, which has disrupted food production, particularly dairy.
Located in the Qatari capital of Doha, Baladna produces its own brand of milk and cheese, cream and yogurt. It also supplies desserts such as rice pudding and natural fruit juices.
Baladna and IFC will explore how “small and medium-sized dairy farmers can be reintegrated into structured, commercially viable supply chains”.
Wagner Albuquerque, the IFC’s regional director for manufacturing and agri-business, said: “This partnership is a great example of what we mean by AgriConnect – building direct, practical links between smallholder farmers, market infrastructure and private-sector investment so that farmers are active participants in resilient, inclusive value chains.
"It also demonstrates the importance of private-sector partners that are willing to engage responsibly in difficult markets, with a focus on inclusion and sustainability.”
Meanwhile, Baladna has also entered a project in Algeria to ship dairy cows from the US starting in November.
Baladna has experience in the area following the formation in 2017 of a dairy farm in the desert located at Umm al-Hawaya for which it imported cattle from Europe and the US.
The Qatar business said last week it had signed contracts worth $635m as part of a $3.5bn project to “progress toward local powdered milk production” in Algeria.
It added the cattle shipping programme will take place over ten months with the aim to import around 30,000 dairy cows from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Idaho, California, Kansas, Iowa and Indiana.
