“Business efficiency is achieved only if overhead costs are managed,” says Advanced Fiberglass GM

As the head of a major business brand, what are the main challenges you face and foresee in your sector?

In the composite industry the main challenge is to make sure that the growth of the company is at a steady rate because, as the head of the company, the primary challenge is to bring in custom-built projects of a certain value. Once the project is completed, we need to hunt for another project to maintain consistent growth and manage the overhead costs of the company. For example, in the mass production of water bottles it involves building a product and then selling it and increasing sales by using marketing strategies. But in custom built composite products growth is based on finding the niche markets which requires custom products to bring designs to reality.

People learn from their mistakes, more so CEOs and business heads, who use this learning to champion growth for their brand and staff. What are some of the learnings you have managed in recent times?

The most important lesson learned is to accept and believe that money is not made when you sell a product, it is always made when you procure the materials / services required to build the product. The second-most important lesson learned in the manufacturing business is that “a business is only efficient if it’s overhead costs are managed efficiently.”

How important is innovation as a facet of your brand’s operations and why?

In composite manufacturing it becomes very important to invest in machinery and products that eventually help you save production time and raw material consumption. The market has never paid more than the previous year, it has always catered to demands asking for a further reduction in prices than the previous year. Competition is not reducing moreover, technology from all over the world is brought to the UAE hence, changing with the times and adding innovation to our production routines is essential to survive in this growing market.

How pivotal is CSR to your brand’s role in fostering a sense of community within the sphere of your activities?

One of the main objective we thrive to achieve is to maintain healthy work environment for our office and production team. We tend to use petroleum based raw materials to manufacture fiberglass hence, we make sure that we do it in the safest possible way adhering to HSE standards laid by the Dubai Municipality. Moreover, we have hired specialist third party companies certified by Dubai Municipality to dispose of hazardous waste and have allocated a much higher budget to it to make sure that our production facility does not bring any adverse effect to the environment. Moreover, we are highly investing into recycling and reusing various consumable products at our facility.

Where do you see your brand, and yourselves 5 years from now in terms of growth?

Our main agenda is to bring this form of construction to countries which are still not aware of the benefits of using composite materials and have successfully catered to exports of over Dh60 million in the last 24 months, most importantly a product designed, engineering and manufactured from scratch Manufactured in UAE to various countries. We target to cater to 3 more countries that are shortlisted after intensive research and see us exporting to them as well in the next 5 years.

What is the legacy you would choose to leave behind for your staff and future CEOs and business leaders?

I need to say that it has become essential to sell a solution and not a product. “We never say no to a challenge” is our slogan and which has been religiously followed by me and our team. We always try to offer solutions to our clients hence, it is one of the reasons that clients we have dealt with trust us and always return to us, even after years.