MANUFACTURER OF THE MONTH- Once a month, Inside Industry looks at a manufacturer — whether locally bred or an international player with a manufacturing base here in Egypt. The monthly feature covers manufacturers in different industries to look at their success stories, the challenges they have faced as local manufacturers, and the path forward as Egypt looks to build a more robust local industry. This month, we spoke with Arda Çimen (LinkedIn), ‏Badr plant manager at Schneider Electric.

My name is Arda Çimen, I’m the manager of the Schneider Electric plant in Badr City. I’m an industrial engineer and a Turkish citizen. I’ve been working for Schneider for almost 20 years now with different roles and in different geographies. I’ve been in Turkey, France, and finally here in this lovely country and lovely factory for a year and a half.

Schneider Electric is a global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, as well as in delivering integrated solutions to enhance efficiency, resilience, and sustainability in different industries and infrastructure.

We’ve been in Egypt for more than 37 years. Egypt hosts our headquarters for North East Africa and Levant, which consists of eight different countries. In 2020, Schneider Electric invested EUR 10 mn dedicated to adding an electrical panel manufacturing line. In 2023, an additional EUR 8 mn was invested in the operations at Badr for a new 10k sqm expansion.

We started the construction work to expand our Badr factory in December. The good news is that in terms of industrial setup, it’s already operational, and has already started commissioning and testing. We are already making our massive operations in this building.

Covid-19 and more recent disruptions to shipping in the Red Sea caused supply chain disruptions that impacted factories and industries all over the world. This led us to shorten and to increase the resiliency of our supply chains, primarily through localization, which also creates added value for the local economy.

When we build or source something from Egypt, this also helps support the growth of the Egyptian economy. We do this in parallel with the government’s priorities and long-term targets for localization. When we started focussing on this, the local component ratio was around 50%, which increased to 81% last year. We’re aiming to reach around 85% this year.

If you ask me why you don’t go for a 100% percent, I would reply that we would love to, but we are carefully aligning our production with the adaptive and resilient pace of industrial development in Egypt. If there is a suitable local alternative, we go for it. In Egypt, we have a very strong supplier base and we don’t feel there’s much of a difference with locally made and imported items.

The main purpose of this factory is to basically serve the Middle East and Africa, not Egypt alone. In 2023, the export rate was around 30%, but we reached 40% last year and will bring this to 50% this year. This includes exports to Saudi Arabia and Iraq in the Middle East, and in Africa, we have Algeria, Libya, and all French and English speaking African countries.

We’ve also started to export to the rest of the world, including France and India. We now export to around 40-45 different destinations from Egypt.

One of the things that makes my life a lot easier as a factory manager in Egypt is the talent pool. There is a large young population with a good education and great English skills. They are also well-acquainted with emerging technologies such as AI, and are following the trends in supply chain and production technologies. It doesn’t take us a long time in Egypt to find the right candidate for the job.

I look at AI from two perspectives — how we can use it in our day-to-day operations? And what can it do for our customers? AI is still very young, but it’s developing quickly. Whether it is supply chain planning, order management, predictive maintenance, quality checks, and etc., we use AI widely. We even have AI-enabled cameras in the factory that can send an automatic signal to stop a collision if it sees a forklift about to hit a human. Every day, we explore new features and see how we can use AI to support our operations.

Your top industrial development stories for the week:

• El Marakby Steel to invest EGP 500 mn in new production upgrades: Local steelmaker El Marakby Steel plans to invest around EGP 500 mn over the next two years to upgrade its high-carbon wire production lines, Chairman Hassan El Marakby told Al Borsa. The move aims to raise local content and boost export competitiveness, while reducing reliance on imported raw materials.