Page 15 - Altogether Magazine Issue 4 English

15 Above all, please tell us about Abdelnour aluminum plant: When was it founded and what is the kind of industry provided by it? The factory was founded in 2011 and started producing in January 2013. It is an aluminum extrusion plant; we purchase the raw material from Qatalum and put it inside highly-heated pistons until it gets transformed into paste, which is then withdrawn at the end of the plunger where there are forming molds designed in Europe according to the clients’ specifications. We sell our products inside and outside the Qatari market. The aluminum plant was founded because of the existence of Qatalum in the Qatari market, which provided us with the raw material used in the manufacturing of our products, without which we did not intend to establish the plant. In the beginning, the local market depended on the import of all aluminum materials from the Gulf countries, especially the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, whose products are characterized as competing with those coming from China. How much did the aluminum plant cost? The plant cost amounted to nearly QR 110 million, including furnishings and equipment. It is also built on a land area of 10 thousand square meters, with the total usable area of approximately 29 thousand square meters. Does the plant depend entirely on raw materials produced by Qatalum or does it import some from abroad? We have relied entirely on the raw materials provided by Qatalum since the establishment of the plant, and did not import any from abroad. As I have said earlier, the idea of founding the plant came as a result of not only the availability of the raw materials in Qatar, but also their high quality provided by Qatalum and its Norwegian partner “Hydro” which is globally respected for its production of raw materials of high physical and chemical properties, in addition to their price - which is lower than that of their GCC counterparts because of the shipping cost.