Al Jaber Engineering Headquarter – Courtesy of IDEP Consult
CAIRO – 17 July 2017: The Doha-based Al-Jaber Engineering won a contract to build a food-processing and storage facility near Hamad Port, QNA reported Sunday.
Qatar will reportedly spend 1.6 billion riyals (about $431 million) on the facility, with the aim to meet local demand for rice, sugar and cooking oil.
In June, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced that they were cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar because of what they called its support for terrorist groups and involvement in regional conflicts.
The move to process and store food locally was thought of by the Qatari government after the four Arab nations cut air, sea and land links with Qatar.
Moreover, the tiny emirate exports 99 percent of its food supplies, according to Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser with Washington-based Gulf State Analytics in an interview with the Washington Post’s World Views.
Images and footages of empty supermarket shelves in Qatar were circulated on social media outlets, which was deemed a sign that residents flocked to supermarkets to hoard supplies in case a shortage in goods and supplies occurs.
The feud has been boiling for years as Qatar intended to grow its influence across the region by backing the Muslim Brotherhood and extreme Islamist militants in Syria and Libya, not to mention desperate attempts to meddle in the internal affairs of neighboring Gulf countries.
According to the contract, Al-Jaber Engineering is given 26 months to design and build the project.
Qatari Minister of Transport and Communication Jassim bin Saif al-Sulaiti announced Sunday that it will be the first time that such commodities will be processed in Qatar.
A Qatari Transport Ministry press statement said other companies involved in the project are Switzerland’s Buhler AG, Germany’s BIA and Italy’s C.M. Bernardini.
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