Al Meera to offer more national products in 2020

‘Made in Qatar’ products would be more visible in store shelves as Al Meera Consumer Goods Company is seeking to offer a diverse variety of locally-produced goods and food items to its customers this year, an official has said.
This would involve more future partnerships with Qatar-based food and non-food manufacturers, as well as with local farms across the country in order to provide affordable and high-quality grocery items, according to Al Meera Human Resources manager Mohamed Jassim al-Sultan.
“Al Meera is surely working on it, but we are doing that step by step…we need to diversify our partnerships with suppliers both domestic and international,” al-Sultan told Gulf Times on the sidelines of the recent opening of its 53rd branch in Rawdat Al Hamama.
Al-Sultan’s statement underlines the initiative Al Meera launched in November 2019, which aims to support local entrepreneurs by displaying more ‘Made in Qatar’ products on store shelves.
During the launching event, Al Meera IT director Mohamed al-Bader underscored the importance of the initiative, saying it is “the first step” to transform small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into full-fledged companies in the future.
Aside from diversifying its local product offerings, al-Sultan said Al Meera is also on track in terms of increasing its selling area and expansion plans this year, which includes a mall branch.
“We are everywhere; the newly-opened branch in Al Hamama is Al Meera’s 53rd store in the country, and there is a plan to open more, including a mall branch that is opening soon. This is our strategy – to be close to the people, so wherever there are new communities or lands being occupied you will find an Al Meera.
“This year, we are also working on the renovation of our branches and organising the products in our shelves as part of our plan to offer our customers a wider choice of groceries,” al-Sultan said.
Responding to a query on Qatarisation, al-Sultan said: “We are working on Al Meera’s Qatarisation strategy and the number is increasing; we are also trying to increase the number of Qataris in the head branches and support services…we are trying to target the talented people, especially in the retail and commercial side.”
It can be recalled that during Al Meera’s annual general assembly held last year, it was announced that Al Meera aims to increase the selling area of the group from 97,000sqm to over 100,000sq m by the end of 2019.
Also, it was announced during the meeting that Al Meera is planning to set up a training academy, which has a two-fold objective.
The first objective is to establish a platform to train staff and continue to improve their knowledge and skills to be more effective, efficient, and be more customer-focused, while the second purpose is to deliver basic retail training to school students and college students to expose them to retail and energise their interests in business.