Al Nassma wants to make foray into niche market doubly sweet

Dubai: The world's sole camel milk chocolate factory, Al Nassma, is planning to expand production and is looking for investors interested in setting up a show manufacturing facility in Dubai, preferably close to the creek.

"Our business is growing continuously," the firm's general manager, Martin van Almsick, told Gulf News. "And we are more and more aware that we are filling a market niche with our products."

The only thing he needs for his new plan is the appropriate funding, says Van Almsick, although he did not give a timeframe for the new project.

The company's 3,000-camel farm, including the chocolate factory and a dairy in Umm Nahad on the outskirts of Dubai, was inaugurated in October last year.

The project's success at that time was a matter of conjecture with the factory designed keeping in mind an annual output of 100 tonnes.

Today, however, all doubts have been removed about the demand for the "five-star chocolate", as van Almsick calls it.

In the UAE, Al Nassma has partnerships with Jumeirah Hotel Group, Kempinski, JW Marriott, Grand Hyatt, Dubai Duty Free and Etihad Airways.

The second produce of the farm, camel milk drinks under the brand name ‘Camelicious', are sold in several malls and supermarket chains. The chocolate products are also exported to Japan, the US and Europe.

Technical knowhow

Al Nassma is a joint venture of the Dubai Government and HM Chocolate Holding, based in Vienna and founded by entrepreneurial confectioner Hans Georg Hochleitner from Salzburg, Austria.

Renowned Austrian chocolate manufacturer Manner, a century-old family company in Vienna, holds 45 per cent of HM Chocolate's stake and is assisting Al Nassma in the production process and delivering know-how.

Camel milk is delivered as freeze-dried powder to Manner's Viennese factory and processed into big chocolate blocks there.

Then the raw blocks return to Dubai for final production. Around 15 employees oversee the transformation of the blocks into fancy chocolate products.

In August, Al Nassma chose UPS to ship its products across the world. There are certain precautions to be taken, the most important being storage temperature regulation, Van Almsick says.