United Arab Emirates: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced that it achieved cost savings of AED 70 million in 2018 through employee suggestions and continuous improvement projects, the highest ever in a year since the programme began in 1981.
Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of EGA, said: “At EGA we believe that everyone has a role to play in continuous improvement. Employees who are closest to a certain work process are often best placed to spot opportunities to improve it. Our programmes are built to enable all our people to share and action their ideas. When a company of our size has every employee striving to be an innovator, these numbers on cost savings are not surprising.”
Nearly AED 50 million worth of savings were generated through a record 38,037 proposals submitted as a part of EGA’s Suggestion Scheme, under which individual employees recommend improvements in their area of operation. In addition, 201 improvement projects, resulting in the remaining savings were registered through “Tamayaz”; a cross-functional, team based program, initiated in 2016 for supervisory & non-supervisory employees as a mean of problem solving and process improvement across EGA.
EGA shares a proportion of the cost savings from employee suggestions and Tamayaz projects with the teams implementing the suggestion or project. Since 1999, EGA has received nearly 500,000 suggestions for operational and technical improvements, out of which 254,551 have been implemented to generate savings of AED 345 million. Their achievements are also recognised within the company every month and at annual events. In 2018, six Tamayaz projects were awarded in the 10th Global Continual Improvement & Innovation Awards in different categories
In addition to programmes to engage its entire workforce in continuous improvement, EGA has a dedicated technology development team which focuses on innovation to improve its core process technology.
EGA has developed its own technology for more than 25 years and has used UAE-developed technology in every smelter expansion since the 1990s. The company has also retrofitted all its older production lines.
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Contacts at EGA:
Simon Buerk
056 3111 536
Fatima Al Mutawa
Khadija Al Marzooqi
050 8777 850
Sahar Farhat
050 1213 420
About EGA
Emirates Global Aluminium is equally-owned by Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi and the Investment Corporation of Dubai.
It is the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside the oil and gas industry, and the largest company jointly owned by the two Emirates.
EGA’s aluminium is the second largest made-in-the UAE export after oil and gas. EGA has a nameplate production capacity of 2.4 million tonnes of aluminium per year. EGA is the only UAE producer and makes the UAE the fifth largest aluminium producing nation in the world.
EGA has some 300 customers in more than 60 countries. About 80 per cent of EGA’s production is value added products, one of the highest proportions of any aluminium company in the world.
EGA’s aluminium is primarily used in the construction, automotive, packaging, aerospace and electronics industries.
Over 10 per cent of EGA’s production is sold in the UAE to around 26 downstream aluminium companies that make products with EGA’s aluminium. The growing broader aluminium sector in the UAE already employs around 30,000 people, making it the largest employer amongst the UAE’s energy intensive industries.
EGA itself employs around 7,000 of these people including almost 1,200 UAE Nationals.
EGA has focused on technology development for over 25 years. EGA has used its own technology for every expansion since the 1990s. In 2016 EGA became the first UAE industrial company to licence its core industrial process technology internationally.
As a corporate citizen of the UAE, Emirates Global Aluminium aspires in all its operations to be measured amongst the world’s leading metals and mining companies in meeting its environmental and social responsibilities.
In 2017, EGA became the first Middle East headquartered company to join the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, a global programme to foster greater sustainability and transparency in the aluminium industry.
EGA was formed in 2014 through the merger of Dubai Aluminium and Emirates Aluminium.
DUBAL’s Jebel Ali aluminium smelter began production in 1979. At almost five square kilometres, EGA’s Jebel Ali site is five times bigger than Dubai Mall.
EMAL started production in 2009 and its Al Taweelah aluminium smelter was the largest single-site aluminium smelter in the world when completed. EGA’s Al Taweelah site is five times bigger than Al Maryah Island at six square kilometres.
EGA has its own power stations at both sites, producing electricity to meet its needs. EGA’s electricity generation capacity is 5,450 megawatts, making EGA the third largest electricity generator in the UAE after the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority.
EGA also produces water through desalination units at its power plants. In addition to meeting its own water requirements, EGA supplies 1.5 per cent of the water needs of Dubai as well as commercial water customers and bottlers.
Today EGA is expanding upstream and internationally to secure the natural resources the UAE’s aluminium industry needs and create new revenue streams.
EGA’s wholly-owned subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation is building a bauxite mine and associated export infrastructure in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, in the largest greenfield investment in that country in over 40 years.
In the UAE, EGA is building the country’s first alumina refinery at Al Taweelah. The project will reduce the UAE’s dependence on imported alumina and supply 75 per cent of the Al Taweelah smelter’s needs.
For more information on EGA please visit www.ega.ae.
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