Type: Private Company
Address: P.O. Box 5302, Anam Building, Al Mugama Street, Taiz, Republic of Yemen
Telephone: (967 04) 215171
Fax: (967 04) 212334
Web: http://www.hsagroup.com
Employees: 10,500
Sales: $32 billion (2007 est.)
Incorporated: 1938 as Hayel Saeed Anam & Brothers
NAIC: 424410 General Line Grocery Merchant Wholesalers; 311511 Fluid Milk Manufacturing; 311821 Cookie and Cracker Manufacturing; 312221 Cigarette Manufacturing
SIC: 5141 Groceries - General Line; 2026 Fluid Milk; 2052 Cookies & Crackers; 2111 Cigarettes
Hayel Saeed Anam Group of Cos. is the largest private-sector company in Yemen, and reportedly controls as much as 60 percent of that country's economy. The Hayel Saeed Anam Group operates as a holding company across a broad spectrum of industries, including domestic and international trade, shipping, import/export, wholesale and retail; services, including insurance, maritime logistics and support; real estate and hotel operations; and manufacturing, ranging from biscuits, sugar, dairy products, and other foods, to plastics, sponges, and other household goods, plastic bags, pipes, houses, and corrugated cartons.
The group's flagship operation is its Hayel Saeed Anam & Co. trade subsidiary, which markets and distributes the group's own products, as well as those of a number of international companies, including Kraft, Unilever, Nutricia, Nestlé, and British American Tobacco. Other trade subsidiaries include Middle East Trading Co.; National Trading Co.; United Marketing Co.; Al-Saeed Trading Co.; Artex Trading Co., which distributes household appliances and consumer electronics goods; and Widyan Trading Company, acting as a Yemen-based distributor for China's Jotun, Chinese Beijing Baxian, and Chinese Yuchen companies, among others. The company's oldest manufacturing business--and the first in Yemen--is Yemen Company for Industry & Commerce (YCIC), which produces cakes, cookies, biscuits, and confectionery.
Another important part of the group's manufacturing wing is National Company for Sponge & Plastic Industry Ltd. (NCSPI), which oversees the group's plastics manufacturing business. Hayel Saeed Anam has also expanded internationally. The company operates National Biscuits & Confectionery Co. and National Food Industries Co. in Saudi Arabia; Arma Food Industries and Hi-Pack Company for Packaging in Egypt; Cepac, a producer of corrugated carton, in the United Kingdom; palm oil producer Pacific Oils & Fats Industry in Malaysia; and several factories in Indonesia producing soaps, dairy products, yarn, and other products. Many of the company's domestic operations have also been established with foreign partners, including an oil refinery in partnership with Reliance of India, expected to begin operation by 2010.
Founded in 1938 by Hayel Saeed Anam, the company remains privately owned and controlled by the Saeed family, under the leadership of the founder's nephew and group chairman, Ali Mohammed Saeed. Nearly all of the company's management appears to be comprised of members of the Hayel Saeed family. The company's total revenues are estimated at US$32 billion per year.
Founding a Yemeni Empire in 1938
Born in the village of Qaradh in 1902, Hayel Saeed Anam's early years were marked by the extreme poverty of what was then Northern Yemen. As a boy, Saeed worked in his father's weaving business, and often accompanied his father on his journeys to the Khadeer and Al-Rahidar markets. In the early 1920s, however, Northern Yemen, which had formerly been under the control of the Ottoman Empire, had been placed under the oppressive rule of Imam Yahya Hameed al-Deen, who instituted a new series of higher taxes. The new tax system meant the Saeed family's weaving business could no longer support the extended family. In 1923, Saeed left Yemen for France, where he found work aboard a ship in Marseille, and spent time traveling to various ports. Later, Saeed found work in an oil factory, where he remained for six years. In the early 1930s, however, Saeed decided to return to Yemen, opening a small leather goods shop in Aden.
By the end of the decade, Saeed had begun to look beyond retail sales, and in 1938 established a new business for the import and distribution of food and grocery items. Saeed's brothers, who had also worked for a time in France, joined him in the business, which was called Hayel Saeed Anam & Brothers. The family's French experience enabled them to secure a trade partnership with a French businessman, ensuring a steady supply of goods during the war years.
Through the 1940s, Saeed's business became an important focus for the Yemeni import sector. Toward the end of that decade, Saeed decided to expand beyond the Aden region into Northern Yemen. The company's first move was to Hedidah in 1947. The murder of the imam during the coup d'état in 1948 introduced a new, less oppressive era for the region, and Saeed, joined by his son Ahmed and nephew Ali Mohammed, began extending his business to other towns, including Mokha and Sana'a. In 1952, the company took on a new name, Hayel Saeed Anam & Co.
Saeed's thriving import business led to the development of warehousing operations; the company also put its own wheat mill into service. By the end of the decade, the Saeeds had also launched their first foreign operations, under Ahmed Saeed. For this the family formed a second trading company, Middle East Shipping Company. That company's initial focus was on Somalia, before extending elsewhere in the region.
Yemen's First Privately Owned Manufacturer in 1970
Throughout its modern history, Yemen had remained divided into Northern and Southern Yemen, while the strategic Aden port region had been under British colonial control. In the mid-1960s, the United Kingdom was forced to exit Yemen. Aden came under control of a new government, which began nationalizing the region's economy. The Saeed family was then forced to abandon their holdings in Aden, and regroup their business interests in Taiz, in Northern Yemen, in 1969. By 1970, the company had established a new trading arm, Middle East Trading Company (METCO).
The move nonetheless led to new opportunities for Saeed. Northern Yemen at the time benefited from large-scale economic, political, and military support from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the western powers, opposed to the increasingly Marxist-oriented government in Southern Yemen. The influx of aid enabled Northern Yemen to launch a drive toward modernizing its infrastructure especially toward developing a degree of industrial independence. Saeed recognized the potential for developing the family's own industrial interests, and in 1970 built the region's first privately owned manufacturing operation, Yemeni Company for Industry and Commerce (YCIC). For this, Saeed found a German partner, which supplied the technology and equipment. YCIC was launched with a single production line and just 120 employees. Over the next decade, the company grew into Yemen's largest producer of biscuits, cookies, cakes, and confections, with 15 production lines and more than 1,500 employees.
The Saeed family benefited again following the military takeover of Northern Yemen in 1974. The new government instituted a technocrat-based government in order to speed up the country's economic modernization effort. The Saeeds emerged as an important part of that effort. In 1974, the family founded its second manufacturing company, National Company for Sponge & Plastic Industry (NCSPI), which began producing household sponges. NCSPI experienced strong growth, building up a wider list of plastic-based products.
The Saeed family empire grew again in 1976, with the founding of Yemen Company for Ghee & Soap Industry (YCGSI). That company at first focused on producing vegetable-based ghee, a clarified shortening that was an essential cooking ingredient in Yemeni cuisine, as well as margarine and vegetable oils. YCGSI then expanded, as its name indicated, into the production of soap, starting in 1982, and then detergents in 1984.
By then, the Saeed group had completed a number of new expansion efforts. The company boosted its international position with the creation of Longulf, in the United Kingdom, in 1977. Longulf focused on supplying materials, machinery, and equipment for Saeed's manufacturing operations, as well as other manufacturers in the region. Saeed added a mineral water operation, Arwa Mineral Water Co., in 1978. The company also extended its trading arm with the creation of National Trading Company (Natco), which focused on consumer goods, electronics, pharmaceuticals, home appliances, and other goods.
International Production Network for the New Century
Saeed continued to add to its array of manufacturing operations in the 1980s. The company entered the packaging market in 1983, creating General Industries and Packages Co. (Genpack). The following year, the family founded Arabia Felix Industries in order to produce pesticides and insecticides. In that same year, Saeed launched United Industries Co. (UIC), which began producing cigarettes for the local market. UIC later expanded its reach into Iraq and to a number of markets in Africa.
Toward the end of the 1980s, the Saeed group targeted further expansion beyond Yemen. The company launched its first foreign manufacturing operation in 1987, creating National Biscuits & Confectionery Co. Ltd. (NBCC) in Saudi Arabia, which became the largest producer of chips and biscuits in the Middle East. Next, Saeed entered Malaysia, establishing Pacific Inter-Link, focused on export operations. In 1992, Saeed entered Egypt as well, forming Arma Food Industries, in partnership with Malaysia's Filda, in Cairo. At home, the company extended its packaging capacity with the creation of Yemen Company for Packaging Material Industry (YCPMI), which added the production of polyethylene preforms and plastic closures. The company also formed a joint venture with Shell, Mobil, and Nagi Engineering & Trading to found the country's first lubricants factory, Yemen Lubricants Manufacturing Company, in 1993. In the meantime, the Saeed group also sought to develop export markets for its own production, and formed a new trading company, Al-Saeed Trading Co., for this purpose in 1994. By then, Ali Mohammed Saeed had taken over as chairman of the company, following Hayel Saeed Anam's death in 1990.
By then, too, the discovery of vast oil and natural gas deposits in Yemen had provided the final impetus toward the country's long sought after unification. The country's new political stability, coupled with its newfound wealth, provided still more opportunities for the Saeed group's growth, both at home and abroad. The new purchasing power led the company to develop a distribution wing for home appliances and consumer electronics and other goods, Artex Trading Company, founded in 1994. Two years later, the company added a new import arm, Widyan Trading Company, which focused especially on introducing Chinese consumer and construction goods into Yemen. In 1998, the group inaugurated its first production operations in southern Yemen, the Hadramout Industrial Complex.
Toward the dawn of the new century, much of the Saeed group's growth occurred on an international level. The group invested in corrugated cartons, setting up subsidiaries including Hi-Pack, in Egypt in 1997, and Cepac, in England, in 1999. By then, the group had targeted the Indonesia market for its largest foreign investment. Starting in 1999, the company bought or established six factories there, adding the production of soap, milk powder and other dairy products, and yarn, among other products.
At the same time, Yemen's growing wealth had inspired a number of other projects for the Saeed group into the middle of the first decade of the new century. The company began construction of a cement plant, with a daily capacity of 4,000 tons, in 2004. In 2006, the company formed a joint venture with China's Jotun Paints to build a 17,000-square-meter paint factory in Aden. In that year, also, the Saeed group led an investment consortium in the launch of a US$100 million sugar refinery, to be built in the Aden Free Zone. By 2007, the Saeed group had entered the refinery market, forming a US$532 million joint venture with India's Reliance to build a refinery in Yemen. That complex was expected to be operational by 2010. With sales estimated at more than US$32 billion per year, the Saeed group had grown into Yemen's largest corporation. Indeed, the company claimed to represent as much as two-thirds of that country's economic activity.
Principal Subsidiaries
Al-Alam Industrial Company; Al-Saeed Company for Manufacturing Concrete &Contracting; Al-Saeed Trading Co. Ltd.; Arabia-Felix Industries Ltd; Arma Food Industries (Egypt); Artex Trading Company Ltd.; Arwa Mineral Water Company Ltd.; Cepac (United Kingdom); General Industries and Packages Company; Hadramout Industrial Complex; Hi-Pack Company for Packaging (Egypt); Longulf (United Kingdom); Middle East Shipping Co. Ltd; National Biscuits & Confectionery Co. Ltd. (Saudi Arabia); National Company for Sponge & Plastic Industry Ltd.; National Dairy & Food Company; National Food Industries Company Ltd. (Saudi Arabia); National Products Marketing Co.; National Trading Company Ltd ; Pacific Inter-Link Sdn Bhd (Malaysia); Pacific Oils & Fats Industry S/B (Malaysia); Pt Oleochem Soap Industry (Indonesia); Pt Pacific Texindo Industry (Indonesia); United Industries Company Ltd.; United Insurance Company; United Marketing Company; Widyan Trading Company Ltd.; Yemen Company for Flour Mills & Silos; Yemen Company for Ghee & Soap Industry; Yemen Company for Industry & Commerce Ltd.; Yemen Company for Packaging Material Industry; Yemen Lubricants Manufacturing Company Ltd.
Principal Competitors
Shaher Trading Company Ltd.; Thabet Group of Cos.; National Tobacco and Matches Co.; Yemen Company for Industry and Commercial Ltd.; Mareb Yemen Insurance Co.; Yemen Insurance and Reinsurance Co.; Adhban Trading Corp.; Agricultural Cooperative Co.; General Industries and Packages Co.; National Drug Co.; El Aghil Group of Cos.; United Industries Co.; Middle East Trading Co.
Further Reading
Al-Saqqaf, Imad, "Hael Saeed Ana'am Group of Companies," Yemen Times, January 7, 2002.
------, "A Story of a Blessed Yemeni Man," Yemen Times, November 11, 2004.
Brunton, Daniel, "New Kids on the Block!" International Paper Board Industry, June 2000, p. 24.
"Hayel Saeed Anam," MEED Middle East Economic Digest, April 7, 2000, p. 34.
"HSA to Rope in RIL for Retail Venture in Yemen," Economic Times, February 16, 2007.
"Jotun Yemen Paints Unveils New Factory," Coatings World, May 2006, p. 12.
Nadim Issa, Zawya, "DJ Yemen-Based Group to Build $100M Sugar Refinery," FWN Financial News, August 22, 2006.
"New Cement Plant Planned," MEED Middle East Economic Digest, January 9, 2004, p. 21.
"Sugar Refinery Planned," MEED Middle East Economic Digest, September 22, 2006, p. 27.
"Yemeni Investor Builds a Textile Factory in Indonesia," AsiaPulse News, July 25, 2000.
"Yemen's HAS Builds Six Factories in Indonesia," AsiaPulse News, August 4, 2000.
— M. L. Cohen
