A company in the Persian Gulf called Fathima Group is seeking to
unveil seven new, superstore-style commercial structures with an investment of 200
million AED.
Fathima is a company known for providing attractive retail
environments: promotional literature shows local stores offering a range of fresh
foods and other products in neatly organized store plans. In addition to
supermarkets and department stores, Fathima operates “fashion” retail outlets
and other kinds of stores.
Now, the company is making a high-stakes play to take its
business into seven new locations.
Giant department stores combined with supermarkets are
planned for locations such as the Dubai waterfront, the Sharjah and Ras al
Khaimah emirates, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, as well as Sobha
City/Thrissur in India. Fathima hopes to build upon its established
reputation with the new stores, widening the scope of its merchandising well
beyond the Gulf coast.
Although the designs for the large retail locations are
stunning in and of themselves, perhaps the most impressive part of the
expansion involves building new distribution models that will support the large
volumes of sales the hypermarkets are expected to handle.
To source materials for these locations, Fathima Group will
also build a large food manufacturing facility in Dubai Investment Park for
about 70 million AED. The central location at Dubai investment Park will have
significant cold storage facilities and will be a foundation for distribution
across the UAE. It will also include a central corporate office with the
ability to house 1000 employees.
Along with the sizable personnel and warehouse spaces, there is
a particular plan to accommodate cold storage on the DIP site: a 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility is implementing improvements like energy-efficient
lighting, labor efficient automation and other state-of-the-art designs. Advanced
technologies will track products and keep perishables in good condition. Fathima’s systems are expected to demonstrate some of the newest capabilities of a supply
chain model aimed at deploying resources to international commercial networks.
“(The new center
will) provide fast and efficient packaging, storage and distribution of goods
in the warehouse and faster delivery to retail stores,” Sulaiman Haji, managing director of Fathima Group, recently told Gulf News Journal. “The unit is supposed to be a
central logistics division of the Fathima retail and distribution business … apart
from that cold storage, spices, pulses, food products are some of them.”
Haji also commented on the company’s current business
footprint.
“Presently, Fathima Group operates in UAE, Saudi, Oman,
India, China,” Haji said. “Soon our operations will commence in Malaysia.”
Press statements show Fathima experiencing 12 percent business growth in the current
year, and company leaders are banking on that growth being enough to support the
new developments. Time will show how the large investment will help the chain
to reach new consumer markets and serve a growing population in the GCC and
abroad.
