SWOT analysis SWOT analysis is indispensable to the company’s planning and strategy forming system. This analysis is meant to assist the executives in choosing the most crucial issues facing the organization. Strengths The company’s distribution is one of its strongest points, and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is handled by its fleet of chilled depots and delivery vans that supply food retailers with Almarai products. In addition, free Almarai branded refrigerators were given to bakalas – small local grocery stores. The fridges were to be used exclusively for selling the company’s products, and the shopkeepers covered the electricity costs. This strategy gave Almarai an essential outlet and proved so successful that competitors adopted it as well. Such a distribution system is necessary for the company’s best-selling product since fresh milk only has a shelf life of about a week and needs to be chilled. Another one of Almarai’s strengths is its focus on quality and strong branding associated with it. The company put much effort behind its brand message, “Quality You Can Trust.” To stay true to it, Almarai even refuses to source milk from local farmers and only produces it at its facilities under strict control. This allows for impressively low bacteria levels that could not have been achieved with independent suppliers. Weaknesses High operation costs have not been a concern for Saudi companies since electricity was subsidized, and foreign labor was cheap. This changed with the shift in government policy, the establishment of a value-added tax, and increased costs associated with foreign labor. Before these changes, Almarai’s relatively high overhead costs and inefficient logistics were not a critical issue when it was still growing rapidly. In the crowded modern market, however, every extra percent makes a vital difference. Furthermore, one of Almarai’s greatest strengths, proficiency in fresh milk production, is arguably also a weakness, as the native Saudis tend to prefer long shelf life alternatives like ultra-high temperature milk, or UHT, which the company only produces when they have an excess of fresh milk. This inclination appears to be rooted deeply in the people’s upbringing and is not easily affected. Finally, IDJ, Almarai’s joined venture with PepsiCo, despite all its ambitions to cover the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia has remained just in Jordan and Egypt, after 10 years of losses. Teeba, the Jordan part of this operation, has been facing harsh conditions in the mainly supermarket-focused segment, where its less flexible structure does not allow it to compete with local companies for prices. Opportunities The company has plenty of aspects it could improve, one of those is logistics. The way it uses separate vans for perishable and non-perishable products leads to some retailers being visited by up to three Almarai vehicles in a day: one with dairy, one with bakery, and one with poultry. Lately, Almarai has started to introduce more optimal delivery routes as well as new combined vans that could carry chilled and ambient temperature products simultaneously. While these optimizations did help improve efficiency, in th