With a home grown market share for poultry products of over 25 per cent and plans to increase this to nearly 35 per cent in the near future, A'Saffa Foods core business is making great strides to reduce the dependency for chicken imports to the Sultanate.

AMEinfo reports that last year, the company also took a major step forward in helping enhance food production in the Sultanate when it moved from being A'Saffa Poultry to become A'Saffa Foods - opening the way to commence production of a broader range of high quality, home produced food products.

In addition to its core chicken products, the company has now also launched 'Khayrat' brand – a subsidiary brand that is already selling a popular brand of beef burgers and beef mince in the market with a range of additional and new products set to be introduced into the market.

Further strengthening the company's reputation as a leader in the domestic food production market, A'Saffa Foods is now considering a plan that would set up a production facility for up to 100 million table eggs a year and another that would enable it to manufacture processed meat products.

A'Saffa Foods Head of Sales and Marketing, Sidhartha Lenka says: "Food security is an increasingly important issue both for Oman and other countries across the GCC. With international commodity prices rising it will also become increasingly expensive to import food products – making it more important than ever for the Sultanate to lower its dependency on imported food. A'Saffa is very proud of its position as the leading poultry producer in the nation and we are now diversifying into other areas that will strengthen our position and also ensure that more and more home produced food gets on to Omani supermarket shelves."

"This is another reason we are also partnering with the Origin Oman initiative to help encourage the general public in the country to buy as much locally produced produce as they can when doing their shopping," he added.

Mr Lenka also argues that producers in Oman are also well placed to ensure that their customers receive only 100 per cent pure 'Halal & Healthy' products that are manufactured and produced in according to the purest Sharia'h principles – giving consumers and families across the Sultanate peace of mind when buying home produced food.

Customers in Oman also benefit from the fact A'Saffa's chickens are naturally fed and hand slaughtered using true halal techniques adding to the healthiness of the chickens that the customer buys at stores all over the country.

The company produces its chicken at a state of the art poultry farm at Thumrait in the south of the Sultanate incorporating the latest international production techniques and technology, reports AMEinfo.

In addition to its market leadership position in Oman, A'Saffa Foods is a major exporter of chicken to the GCC and other international markets.

A'Saffa is also using its skills and expertise to help food security issues in other parts of the Gulf. In Qatar, A'Saffa is working as a consultant to help Hassad Foods to build and operate the largest new poultry production facility in that Emirate.

Meanwhile, the company also believes it is helping to keep the population of Oman healthy when they eat protein-packed A'Saffa chicken that is also full of healthy and valuable vitamins. There are no steroids, no hormones, no preservatives or artificial flavors, no colouring agents and no injection of water to increase chicken weight in A'Saffa Chickens.

Independent nutritionists and scientists have established that chicken is a rich source of nutrients and vitamins, which are vital not only to a healthy balanced diet but for helping to strengthen the immune system of the body.