Baldana building world’s largest integrated dairy facility in Algeria

At a formal event in Algiers, Baladna, a Qatari dairy and food producer, the Algerian government, and GEA represented by CEO Stefan Kleber, took part in a contract signing ceremony, enabling the construction of the world’s largest integrated dairy farm and milk powder facility in Algeria. GEA was mandated to provide a comprehensive range of dairy farming and processing solutions. This project is one of the largest single orders for GEA to date. Milk powder production is planned to commence in late 2027, with gradual scale-up of production volumes over subsequent years.

GEA is set to provide broad range of farm and processing equipment as well as process designs and services in one of its largest orders to date. The order volume is between €140 and €170 million with respective order intake to be booked in second half of 2025

Today, Algeria is the world’s third largest importer of milk powder. To strengthen future autonomy and food security in dairy products, the Algerian government, via its National Investment Fund, and Baladna QPSC from Qatar entered a strategic partnership via the newly formed company subsidiary Baladna Algeria SPA. The partnership’s purpose is to finance and manage the construction of a state-of-the-art integrated dairy farming and milk powder production facility in Algeria’s Adrar province. The locally produced milk powder is planned to meet about 50% of Algeria’s national milk powder needs, representing a significant step towards self-sufficiency. Additionally, the project will create approximately 5,000 jobs.

The facility will be located about 90 kilometres from the provincial capital. Construction will commence at the beginning of 2026, with first milk powder production scheduled to start in late 2027. Production volumes will be gradually expanded. When completed and fully supplied, this facility’s final capacity will amount to approximately 100,000 tons of milk powder per year.

“We are proud that Baladna and the Algerian government are entrusting GEA to play a key part in this lighthouse project,” says Stefan Klebert, CEO at GEA. “Not only are we building the world’s largest facility of its kind, we are also helping to strengthen regional food security and economic development. This project showcases the attractiveness of our technologies and products, underpinned by our capabilities for large-scale process and plant engineering.”

GEA will cover the entire value chain of milk powder production when constructing the facility, from dairy farming to processing and packaging of the final product. The GEA divisions Liquid & Powder Technologies (LPT) and Farm Technologies (FT) are contractual partners with Baladna Algeria. For both of those, the project represents one of their single-largest orders ever received. Other GEA divisions will contribute technologies and products within that scope.

GEA will provide a broad range of solutions from a single source to run the facility’s large milking parlours as well as its milk powder and anhydrous milk fat installations. These include system solutions, such as separators, membrane filtration, heat treatment, as well as evaporation and spray drying plants. Automated packaging and service components are part of the scope, too.

Representatives of Baladna and Baladna Algeria, GEA, as well as other project partners, took part in a formal signing ceremony at the Congress International Center in Algiers on 28 July. The event was attended by numerous guests, including Abdelaziz Ali Al Naama, ambassador of Qatar to Algeria, Algerian Minister of Agriculture Youssef Cherfa and Mohamed Moutaz Al-Khayyat, chairman of the board of Baladna Food Industries.