Saudi Dates

Saudi Arabia produced just over 1.9 million tonnes of dates in 2024 from more than 37 million palms — a crop second only to Egypt's — and exported roughly 350,000 tonnes of it to over 130 countries. What distinguishes the Saudi trade from every other origin is variety depth tied to geography: Madinah grows Ajwa, Safawi, Anbara and Barni; Al-Qassim is the home of Sukkari; the Najd belts around Riyadh and Al-Kharj grow Sagai and move the big Khudri volumes; the Al-Ahsa oasis supplies Khalas; and the northern farms of Al-Jouf and AlUla now grow serious Medjool tonnage. Commercially, though, the first sorting question is not variety but moisture class. Soft dates — rutab-style Sukkari, Medjool and the softer Madinah lines — sit at the top of the moisture range, need cold storage and reefer shipment, and command the premium end. Semi-dry dates — Safawi, Mabroom, Anbara, Sagai, Khalas — sit in the mid-band, tolerate ambient handling, and do most of the wholesale work. Dry dates, Khudri above all, keep for a year or more without refrigeration, which is precisely why they dominate the bulk lanes into South Asia and Africa. Every variety is then graded by count per kilogramme and carton class, packed in SFDA-registered facilities, and shipped against phytosanitary and fumigation certificates issued at origin, with Halal documentation standard.

The buying calendar is set by religion, not by harvest. The crop comes off the palms between July and October, but the demand spike is Ramadan, with secondary peaks around Hajj and Umrah gifting — so importers who wait until the pre-Ramadan quarter buy into the year's tightest market and pay for the privilege. Serious volume buyers contract at or shortly after harvest, fix their premium Madinah lines first (these sell out earliest), and take dry-class volume positions later. Price spans are wide and legitimately so: Khudri in bulk cartons can trade below $2,000 per tonne FOB while top-carton Ajwa Al Aaliya reaches five figures — the span reflects variety scarcity and grading, not inconsistent quality. CBIL structures Saudi date supply at container-load scale: we match the buyer's application to the right variety and moisture class, agree the count-per-kilogramme grade and carton format, and contract FOB Jeddah or Dammam, or CFR/CIF to the destination port. Soft varieties travel in reefer containers at 0–5°C; semi-dry and dry classes ship ambient. For variety-level specification — Ajwa grading, Sukkari moisture bands, Khalas pricing — see the individual variety pages below.