Luxury food producer Bateel seeks to triple in size by 2029

• Date palm trees to double
• Huge potential for growth seen
• Sales growing 25% a year

Bateel International, the Dubai-headquartered luxury food group that owns 40 international boutiques and 30 cafés, plans to double the number of organic date palm trees it cultivates in Saudi Arabia and to build a new factory in the kingdom to meet growing global demand.

The company, which was founded by the Saudi Al Sudairy family and is chaired by the Saudi lawyer Ziad Al Sudairy, intends to triple revenues across its cafe and luxury foods outlets by 2029, Bloomberg reported, in an interview with Bateel’s CEO, Nurtac Afridi.

Afridi, who was CEO of the luxury chocolatier Godiva until last year, said: “We see huge potential for growth over the next five years.” The expansion plans will be self-funded, she said.

“We need more dates, as our sales are already growing 25 percent per year.”

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Bateel opened a new store in Seoul last November and is seeking more international locations, the report said. It has 13 cafes in Dubai, two in Abu Dhabi, 10 in Saudi Arabia and others in Oman and Jordan. 

It also runs food boutiques in countries including the UK, Azerbaijan, India, Egypt, Iraq and Kazakhstan, with 17 in Dubai and 11 in Saudi Arabia.

The company’s roots go back about 80 years, when Abdulrahman Al Sudairy first planted a date grove 250km (155 miles) northwest of Riyadh. The first Bateel Boutique was opened in Riyadh in 1991, and the company claims to have invented the date chocolate in 2000. It also says it is the largest producer of fine chocolates in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, made a play for the company in 2019, but talks never progressed. Bateel is 20 percent owned by the private equity firm L. Catterton, itself backed by the French luxury goods maker LVMH.

Afridi declined to comment on reports that the private equity firm was considering a sale of its stake in Bateel, which was acquired in 2014. “L. Catterton has been a long-term partner, and while it’s their decision to make, I think they still see a lot of growth to come in Bateel,” she said.