One of the clearer outcomes of that background has been the company's move into renewable energy, an area that didn't originally exist within Alfanar's business but has since grown into a significant part of it under Al-Malouhi's direction. Alfanar Global Development now carries a solar, wind, and waste-to-energy portfolio measured in gigawatts, along with billions of dollars in projects moving through various stages of development and financing. Getting projects like these to financial close typically takes years of negotiation with government offtakers, lenders, and equipment suppliers, work that sits well outside the more straightforward job of building and handing over a finished structure.
Al-Malouhi has also spoken about the importance of localising the supply chain behind these renewable projects rather than relying entirely on imported components, an approach that fits with Saudi Arabia's broader push to build domestic manufacturing capacity alongside its renewable energy targets. In practice, that has meant working to have as much of a given solar project built and assembled domestically as possible, short of the panels themselves.
Alfanar itself began in Riyadh in 1976 as an electrification and construction business, growing over the decades into a wider conglomerate spanning manufacturing, engineering, construction, and more recently renewable energy and digital services, before rebranding its project-facing businesses as Alfanar Projects in 2023. Alfanar Global Development sits within that structure as the group's dedicated project development arm, working across multiple countries rather than being tied to any single market.
Looking ahead, Al-Malouhi has pointed to areas like green hydrogen and the power demands of large-scale data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure as places where Alfanar Global Development is looking to expand next, an extension of the same growth-and-strategy instinct that shaped his earlier career at the company. Whether those bets pay off in the same way the renewables push has is likely to define much of his tenure as CEO over the coming years.
