Maaden Brand Guidelines: Saudi Arabia’s 1997 Miner and Its Phosphate Chain

A state miner formed in 1997.

Maaden is the short name of the Saudi Arabian Mining Company, headquartered in Riyadh. English Wikipedia, which gives the name as Maʽaden and notes that it is stylised in capitals, records that it was formed as a Saudi joint stock company on 23 March 1997 to develop the kingdom’s mineral resources. The company’s own history says it was established by royal decree that year and opened its first gold mine, Mahd Al Dhahab. Today its website writes the name as Maaden, while some of its joint ventures still carry the older Ma’aden spelling.

It began with gold. On incorporation, Wikipedia says, Maaden received half of the Saudi Mining Company for Precious Metals from the state-owned Petromin Corporation, and in 1999 it bought the other half from the Swedish miner Boliden. The company says it began operations at the Bulghah gold mine in 2003.

The state has always been the main shareholder. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) held every share at incorporation, according to Wikipedia; in 2007 the capital was enlarged with stakes for the national social insurance and pension funds, and in July 2008 shares were offered to the public on the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul. In June 2018, Wikipedia records, PIF took over the pension and insurance funds’ shares; the company calls that the moment PIF “consolidated its strategic interest.” Share issues to Mosaic in 2024 and to Alcoa in 2025 diluted PIF’s holding, which Wikipedia puts at 63.78% after the second deal.

The company now describes itself as operating through five business units: exploration, gold and growth metals, phosphate, industrial minerals and aluminium. It says it runs 17 sites, employs more than 6,800 people and exports to over 30 countries, and that a board-approved 2040 Strategy, adopted in 2021, sets its growth targets.

From Al Jalamid to Ras Al Khair.

Phosphate made Maaden a fertiliser company. Its own timeline records that in 2007 it set up the Maaden Phosphate Company (MPC) in partnership with SABIC, and its website says Maaden owns 70% of that joint venture. MPC mines and processes phosphate rock at Al Jalamid in the north of the country and runs an integrated fertiliser complex at Ras Al Khair.

The two are linked by rail. English Wikipedia records that the first phosphate travelled from Al Jalamid to Ras Al Khair in May 2011 on the North-South Railway, a freight line funded by PIF that also serves the company’s bauxite mine; the company says its ammonia plant started commercial production the same year.

A second phosphate venture followed in 2013: Ma’aden Wa’ad Al Shamal Phosphate Company (MWSPC), set up, the company says, with Mosaic and SABIC at Wa’ad Al Shamal, an industrial city the company describes as a gateway to the kingdom’s northern mineral reserves. That partnership was later unwound. On 25 December 2024 the Saudi business site Argaam reported that Maaden had completed the acquisition of all the shares held by Mosaic Phosphates in the venture, including related marketing rights for phosphate and fertiliser products, paid in newly issued Maaden shares deposited the day before. Wikipedia puts Mosaic’s stake at 25%.

The company says its phosphate plants at Wa’ad Al Shamal and Ras Al Khair can produce about 6 million tonnes a year of products including diammonium phosphate (DAP) and monoammonium phosphate (MAP), and that a third phase of the project is meant to raise that to 9 million tonnes. It describes itself as one of the world’s top three exporters of phosphate-based fertilisers, supplying about a fifth of global phosphate trade; those are the company’s own figures. It also says it began a feasibility study in 2016 for a further phosphate fertiliser complex at Wa’ad Al Shamal, which includes a new ammonia plant.

Design and documentation.

Fertiliser companies sell something most people never see up close: granules, prills and crystals that leave a mine or a chemical plant in bulk and end up spread across fields. Their visual language tries to bridge that distance. A familiar image is a handful of granules held in open palms, which turns a commodity into something a farmer can weigh and judge, and links the product to the people who use it.

The second register is the field. Corporate reports and websites in this sector lean on green crops, wide horizons and drone shots looking straight down on rows of maize, rice or vines. These images speak to growers and investors at once: they show the end use of the product, and they suggest scale without showing a single factory.

The third register is industrial. Open-pit mines, conveyor belts, evaporation ponds, acid plants and port terminals with ships at the quay appear alongside the fields, because extraction and logistics are the business. Packaging carries the brand into the farmyard: printed sacks and big bags, often with a crop icon, a nutrient formula and a product-range name on the front. Trade events such as the International Fertilizer Association’s Annual Conference add another stage, with stands, lanyards and presentation decks.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — when and where it was founded, who owns it, where it mines and makes its products, and how its name has changed — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word. The palettes and typefaces shown here are our own unofficial interpretations, not official brand assets.

Fertiliser, aluminium and gold under one name.

Fertiliser is only one of Maaden’s businesses. On 20 December 2009, Wikipedia records, it signed an agreement with the American aluminium maker Alcoa to build an integrated aluminium industry at Ras Al Khair, through three companies owned 74.9% by Maaden and 25.1% by Alcoa: a bauxite mine and alumina refinery, a smelter and a rolling mill. The smelter produced its first metal in December 2012, and the bauxite mine at Al Ba’itha began operating in May 2014. Maaden took Alcoa’s share of the rolling mill in June 2019 and bought out its stakes in the other two companies with effect from 24 June 2025, Wikipedia says.

Gold and copper sit alongside. The company says construction of the Mansourah Massarah gold mine and processing plant began in 2020, and that in 2023 it launched Manara Minerals, a joint venture with PIF that it says will strengthen its “global mining footprint.” Its gold and growth metals unit, it says, runs seven gold mines and a copper joint venture.

What links the businesses is geography. The company describes Ras Al Khair as the place where its fertiliser, ammonia and aluminium plants stand, joined by railway to the Al Jalamid phosphate mine, the Al Ba’itha bauxite mine and the city of Wa’ad Al Shamal, with Ras Al Khair port as the export gateway for its fertilisers.

The name itself has shifted in print. Wikipedia sets it as Maʽaden with a raised comma, the joint ventures use an apostrophe, and the company’s current website and copyright line use plain Maaden; the Saudi business site Argaam lists the stock in capitals as MAADEN.

For a design guide, Maaden shows a state-backed miner presenting phosphate, aluminium and gold as one connected industrial chain. Compare Mosaic, its former partner at Wa’ad Al Shamal, and OCP Group, another state-linked phosphate producer. For this guide we use a copper earth, a desert sand and a Gulf teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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