How many food manufacturers are in Saudi Arabia?
Food processing: meat, dairy, bakery, dates, fruit and other food products.
37.1K
active registrations list food manufacturers activities — 2.6% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
37,149 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list food manufacturers activities as of 16 September 2026 — 2.6% of all classified registrations, the 31st-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
11,397 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +75.4% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (12,815), Jeddah (3,956), Makkah (2,345) lead. Relative to its size, Abha is the most concentrated: food manufacturers make up 1.6× the share they hold nationally.
48.9% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 25,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 37,149
- 2.6% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 11,397
- +75.4% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 48.9%
- 18,159 of 37,149
- Median company capital
- SAR 25k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where food manufacturers are registered
Column height: food manufacturers by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh12,8151.1×
- Jeddah3,9561.0×
- Makkah2,3451.3×
- Madinah1,6761.2×
- Buraydah1,3541.5×
- Dammam1,3000.8×
- Najran8580.9×
- Taif8301.0×
- Khamis Mushait6110.9×
- Abha5981.6×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Food manufacturers: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- Traditional local bread baking3,924Activity code 107110
- Meat and poultry cutting, processing and packaging3,456Activity code 101044
- Sweets preparation3,054Activity code 107182
- Bread and bread products from automated bakeries2,104Activity code 107120
- Traditional and oriental sweets manufacturing1,731Activity code 107181
- Slaughterhouse operation1,465Activity code 101011
- Fruit and vegetable cutting and packaging1,397Activity code 103014
- Grain mills990Activity code 106116
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship18,97651.1%
- LLC17,21646.3%
- JSC7882.1%
- SJSC660.2%
- General partnership620.2%
- Limited partnership270.1%
- Foreign branch8<0.1%
- GCC branch6<0.1%
Common questions
How many food manufacturers are there in Saudi Arabia?
37,149 active commercial registrations list food manufacturers activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most food manufacturers?
Riyadh, with 12,815 — 34.5% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 3,956.
Is the number of food manufacturers growing?
11,397 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +75.4% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in food manufacturers in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in food manufacturers?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.