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Almarai (Arabic for "pasture"), was established in Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1977 as a partnership between the Irish agri-foods pioneer Alastair McGuckian and his brother Paddy, and Prince Sultan bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Kabeer. Today, Almarai is the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the world. During the early 1990s, Almarai entered a period of restructuring and reinvestment that took it from a decentralized to a centralized structure. Five decentralized processing plants were replaced with the a central processing plant. Also ten small scattered dairy farms were replaced with four large dairy farms in Al Kharj in the central region. 2005 brought many developments for Almarai, a second larger central processing plant was commissioned, incorporating a new cheese plant, two new super-farms were commissioned and Almarai a publicly listed company that has around 70,000 shareholders. In 2007, Almarai entered the bakery category by acquiring Jeddah-based Western Bakeries. Two years later, it started the construction of a new bakery facility in Al Kharj. n 2009, Almarai acquired the Hail Agricultural Development Company (HADCO). After investing in a production facility, it launched the new poultry brand -- Alyoum. Almarai was the first dairy farm in to be accredited with ISO 22000. Almarai also received the ISO 9001-2000, across all its operating divisions, (farming, procurement, processing, technical research and development, distribution and supply chain.