Madar Holding, the international arm of building materials business of Saudi-based Al Fozan Group, said its first half turnover has almost doubled to Dh1 billion ($271 million).

The company said their robust growth this year was due to the strong results of their operations in the Gulf, Levant and Sudan markets, in addition to new markets such as Kuwait and Oman, as quoted in the Gulf News.

“We are very pleased with our growth in the first half of 2008 which was achieved across all our markets and categories,” said Madar chief Sameh Hassan.

For the rest of the year, Hassan said they remain cautious taking into account the challenges facing the building materials manufacturing and trading industry.