Mohamed Althaf, Director, LuLu Group International
LULU Group International (LuLu Group), a highly diversified conglomerate with successful business entities in strategic locations worldwide, is venturing into logistics industry.
In an interview to The Business Year (TBY), Mohamed Althaf, Director, Lulu Group International revealed that Lulu Group’s biggest priority in the upcoming years is to ‘open the logistic centre in 2020.”
“We will stick to retail, though we will have multiple formats and increase in our channels. The biggest priority now is to open the logistic centre.. the other priority is to open all our pending stores, including in Lusail and The Pearl, by1Q2020. We will also look at the demographics of people coming to the World Cup and make sure they are taken care of”, Althaf told TBY.
The retail giant’s fresh plans in the pipeline include a locally sourced food brand. Althaf said Lulu Group will start producing its own label of food products. “We have already started his process by commissioning about 15 items from local producers who matched our quality and standards. These will be products such as processed meat, nuts, and canned foods. Our next stage will be to export them to other countries.”
“We are ensuring we have an excellent export ecosystem here and a favourable tax structure. Qatar also has great trade treaties with other countries. We will look for potential markets in the GCC like Oman and Kuwait, and perhaps Iraq, India and Bangladesh”.
Althaf noted Lulu Group is doing a pioneer farm-to-store program. The Group partners closely with farmers and work with their production planning and make sure everything they harvest reaches the Lulu’s store in less than two hours. “We also have buyback programs and algorithms that can predict demand, so farmers can plan accordingly. Farms have been increasingly significant. Local capacities have improved considerably.”
On Lulu Group’s embracing new technologies in order to enhance its efficiency, Althaf said the group’s delivery chain is fully under its control. “We do not rely typical third-party deliveries. We have specially designed trucks… with tracking devices.”
