3. 4 www.safwacc.com 5
The year that
ASCC was
founded
providing buses, in addition to
adequate accommodation on-
site for the majority of plant staff.
Our plant is far from town, so the
least we can do is reduce risks by
making sure our employees get
back home safe and sound. ”
The processes involved in
creating cement – grinding stone,
burning it (up to 1400 degrees
Celsius) until it’s liquefied, and
grinding again into a powder –
involves behaviors and practices
that can be dangerous if they are not
properly anticipated and secured.
The company ensures strict control
of every situation to guarantee
safety procedures are followed.
“The quarry area we have on-
site has a very tough mountain
topography, and working on it is
very complex,” Bestani explains.
“We need to drill, to blast materials,
vehicles need to go up and down,
and we need excavators to ensure
full control over falling rocks.
Geomining experts that have visited
our quarry warned us on the high
numbers of hazards that have to be
monitored and anticipated. We have
Riad Bestani, Supply Chain Director
of Alsafwa Cement, describes the
positive effect his procurement overhaul
has had on the prestigious company
A
lsafwa is a joint venture between four
partners, with half of them private and
half public, the former being two industrial
partners – LafargeHolcim, the world leader in
the building materials industry, and El Khayyat, a
red brick manufacturer. Based in Saudi Arabia,
this cluster of companies has led to Alsafwa
becoming a trusted and respected company
across the GCC, to the point that it plans to
double capacity by 2017.
Riad Bestani, the CPO of Alsafwa’s cement arm,
joined the company in 2013 after many years of
procurement experience. This familiarity with the
industry means that he is well aware of the safety
issues of providing cement in a region like Saudi
Arabia, even outside the company’s property.
“Road safety is a real challenge in this part of
the world,” he says, “and Alsafwa people need
to drive back and forth more than 300km per
day. One of the things we’ve done to ensure the
best health and safety conditions for our staff
is reducing the travelling hazards for them by
2008
4. www.safwacc.com 7
Address: P.O.Box 325591 Riyadh 11371 | Tel: +966 11 47 622 30 | Fax: + 966 11 29 16 798. | Email: hesham@intermaint.net | Website: www.intermaint.net
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Aceros y Suministros, founded in 1951, is a
company specialized in manufacturing and
supplying steel wear parts for the cement
&mining industries. Offering impact, abrasion,
corrosion and high temperature resistant
steels, to suit different working conditions
and processes such as crushing, grinding,
pyroprocessing and material handling. Our
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the most demanding technical requirements.
www.acerosysuministros.com
cement@acerosysuministros.com
Contact:
strict safety exigencies towards our suppliers
working on-site, and our employees make sure
health and safety requirements are being fulfilled.
“We have to be very careful, so we assess
suppliers to ensure they understand our safety
procedures. We train them, and we refresh that
training regularly. We make checks and audits
across every level, and really these are basic
requirements. Lives are at stake. When a safety
problem appears, everyone is empowered to
stop it and report it for deep analysis of its root
causes. We have company-wide reviews with
health and safety committees which makes
sure we’re implementing the action plans.”
When Bestani joined the company, one of his
main missions was to create a proper process
for procurement activity and build a structured
procurement organisation. Due to a growing
market and a high number of job opportunities,
one challenge in Saudi Arabia – and across
the GCC – is employees’ tendency to quickly
move on, especially the younger generation,
making it challenging to acquire and retain the
right staff. Bestani immediately brought on
board new people for his team composed of
trusted connections he had made during his
career, and he ensured the existing team was
properly positioned for tasks they fitted into.
“It’s about networking, putting together the
right organisation, delegating to people in
“We are one
of the very
few, if not the
only company
to be using
alternative
fuel in the
cement
industry”
– Riad Bestani, Supply
Chain Director of
Alsafwa Cement
5. 8 May 2016 www.safwacc.com 9
The number
of ASCC
employees
300
key areas, and building trust with people you
believe can bring you the performance. The
procurement team was split into three groups –
industrial sourcing, general services sourcing,
and performance activities, which give you the
performance and evaluation of the way you’re
managing your supply chain. We track a number
of KPIs among the suppliers, assessing their
performance, cost reduction for main strategic
suppliers, and lead time between requests
and orders as well as spend coverage.”
Bestani spent two years implementing a task
force composed of people from main interacting
departments of the company – plant, finance,
and IT – making sure they worked intelligently and
understood what their individual responsibilities
were. It has meant enormous progress in terms of
procurement, but it is a continuous task to keep
people trained and engaged in their job role.
Bestani explains: “I had to drive far-reaching
changes. It’s not easy to accept that there are
hurdles to overcome and a lot of convincing that
6. C O N S T R U C T I O N
www.safwacc.com 1 1
“Saudi having
such a high
employee
turnover is
challenging,
so you have to
stick with your
managers to
understand
how to
overcome the
situation”
– Riad Bestani, Supply
Chain Director of
Alsafwa Cement
Efficient Operation Through
Quality Lubrication
as of today. It gives us all kinds of advantages;
there’s a sort of mileage card and the more
Saudi nationals you have on board, the more
you can get loans and subsidies from banks
and the government. It’s a great incentive.”
The company also tries hard to increase female
employees number into work, since national law
allows it only in specific areas. Alsafwa hired its
first female employee in 2010, and Bestani is
pleased to have contributed in his department
last year with the first female in procurement:
“I’m proud of being able to do that, because
it’s challenging, since women have a long way
to go to gain access to the job market. We hire
most of them into entry positions and train
them up for better opportunities later on.”
The cement business in Saudi Arabia
is enormous; the nation produces 50-60
million tons a year, compared with the US
which creates 75 million tons with ten times
the population. Most of the companies that
produce it are 20-30 years old, and the way
Alsafwa’s cement business differentiates itself
is through innovation and sustainability.
“We focus a lot on innovative solutions. Oil is
becoming a scarcer commodity, so we’re looking
at alternative fuels, and we’re working with
municipalities and utilities companies who are
eager to develop more environmentally-friendly
use of energy through waste management
needed to happen, but in the end
it was worth the effort, and it’s
been quite positive with results
translating to some big savings.
Saudi having such a high employee
turnover is challenging, so you
have to stick with your managers to
understand how to overcome the
situation and to retain the talent.”
Saudisation is being heavily
promoted in the country, and
involves retaining
as much
business as possible in the
Kingdom itself. The rule in Saudi
is that if a foreign company wants
to invest, it has to be making a
partnership with a local company.
It is also required that investors
procure obligations depending on
the sector – for cement, there has to
be a minimum level of Saudisation.
“HR, for example, needs to be
Saudi national,” Bestani says. “The
minimum general Saudisation
in our sector needs to be 12
percent, and we have 49 percent
7. 1 2 www.safwacc.com 1 3
ASCC’s
annual
revenue
500m
Riyal
and recycling initiatives. This is one of the
great advantages the LafargeHolcim group
has in terms of developing solutions.
“Its highly state-of-the-art research center
in Lyon, France, allows different business units
of the group around the world to benefit from
its knowledge and experts in key practices.
However, the move is very slow here, and it
takes a while to get approvals. It requires a lot
of involvement, patience, and commitment to
achieve what we want to. We are one of the
very few, if not the only company to be using
alternative fuel in the cement industry.”
The company’s motto is ‘think global, act
local’, and Bestani is keen to stand out from
other Saudi businesses with Alsafwa’s unique
approach: “The support we get from the group
in terms of worldwide supplier panel and
Best Cost Countries solutions – a platform
based in China helping to source alternatively
to European brands – is definitely giving us
a step ahead compared to competition, and
we always need to keep that advantage.
“In two years’ time, we are not going to be doing
procurement the same way. Procurement evolves
with the needs, and sustainability will change with
it. This procurement department wasn’t always
making use of all these advantages, and I’ve
had to adapt it to bring it up-to-date. Business
isn’t static; we’ll be improving all the time.”
8. AlSafwa Cement Company
Sumou Building, 3rd Floor, King A. Aziz Road, Saudi Arabia – Jeddah.
Tel: +966 (12) 220-4100 / Fax: +966 (12) 234-6209
Email: customer.service@safwacc.com / www.safwacc.com
