FINE, News / Events

Elia Nuqul, born in 1928, is today at the helm of one of the Arab world's largest industrial groups. At about the age of 16 his dream was to finish higher studies at a good university and move on to a comfortable job. But fate had other designs for him.

Like everyone else, my family thought they would soon be returning to their home in Palestine after the 1948-War. But as it turned out, this was the beginning of a very long journey away from home. Looking back now, it was these circumstances that shaped my life, creating the detours that put me on track to becoming the industrialist I am today. My good fortune is a direct result of my constant work to look after my family's welfare in the aftermath of 1948.

When the Zionists were terrorizing us in the mid 1940s, I was in my teens, engulfed in learning and was always at the top of my class. I would often be studying for next year's curriculum to ensure that no other student passed me in grades. I fondly remember my teacher Jamil Bannoura who polished my brains and encouraged me to read English books about physics and hydrostatics. My family at times borrowed money to buy my books.

I received my Palestine Matriculation certificate and went on to Beirut, where my older brother and uncle lived and worked, to pursue the London Matriculation which was the higher certificate. My uncle, Beni Noursi, knew the deputy of the American University in Beirut and helped me apply and enroll, which was a dream to me.

My fate, however, was not in academia; it was in life's schooling. After seven days at my new university, my brother's friend, who operated a taxi service between Palestine and Lebanon, brought us the bad news that my sisters and parents had literally walked out of their home in Al-Ramleh to Ramallah, continuing their journey on foot to Salt in Jordan before finally arriving in Amman. They slept in a church in Salt, had no money and ate only dibis (thick nutritious syrup made from dates) and bread along the way.

Upon hearing of their suffering, I immediately packed whatever belongings I had in Beirut and asked my brother's friend to drive me through Syria and to the borders of Jordan. Because I wasn't coming through the King Hussein Bridge, I had to smuggle myself into Jordan. The taxi driver literally choreographed my steps across the borders, asking me to move only one kilometer in a straight line, then 300 meters to the left, then again several hundreds of meters in another direction before I was safe inside Jordan. I would then rendezvous with him inside Jordan to be guided to where my family stayed in Amman, all 18 of them in a small apartment.

The very next day after joining my family in Amman in 1950, I forced my younger brother to quit his work at the Royal Air Force Airport (RAF) so he would continue his studies. His job paid him a salary of JD6 which we badly needed at the time; but I wanted him to continue his education and I went out that same day to look for a job. My brother joined the Hussein College which had many of our acquaintances from Palestine and later continued his studies in Engineering in Cairo University, which granted Palestinians free university education.

My new quest in Jordan was to create income to save my family. I headed to where my other brother worked, which was at the Qattan family food business. He was getting paid JD12. We had to live on such meager revenues no matter what.

I asked my brother to see if I can get a job with the Qattans as well. It worked and they placed me as an assistant to the accountant who grudgingly took me as he wanted his brother to get my job instead.

Eventually, Tawfiq Qattan, who managed the business with his father, liked my dedication to the job. Later they would grow fonder of me as I impressed them with a system for stocktaking. This organized the flow of goods between their wholesale and retail business, which was prone to mismanagement. I was eventually receiving the high monthly salary of JD25 and Tawfiq's father, who founded the business, would often tell his friends, "I have an employee who is worth 10 others."

The Qattan grocery outlet was located, like every other grocer, in Souq al Sukar market and they had a wholesale store in another location. At the beginning, I knew little about accounting and literally had to learn everything by copying. This would change after I joined a distance learning academic program with the School of Accountants in Glasgow. This experience had set me on my path towards becoming the founder and the head of today's Nuqul Group.

After 5 years with the Qattans, the entrepreneurial bug started biting. I asked Tawfiq to let me go and found my own business. My motivation was that I needed to find jobs for my brothers. You'd think this would have made him angry and resentful towards me, but no; instead he was supportive and took me to Nazeer Al Sharabi, who was heading the Department of Imports and Exports to help me get an import/export license. Those licenses had a great value attached to them at the time and were hard to get, but nevertheless my selfless friend, Tawfiq, used his clout to issue one for me.

Many of us were helping each other at the time. After getting the license, Judeh Suewadeh, who was partners with the Qattans in the business, also guaranteed me at the bank to get my first loan to start the business.

My first product shipment was Nescafe from Nestle, even though the Qattans had the agency for Jordan. They had no problem with this. We also started importing other food items and rented our shop in Souq al Sukar from Saeed El Mufti.

My business grew and I was doing a lot better by now. We were selling large quantities of herring, which came in wooden barrels from Holland. In Jordan many families relied on this food to survive, which came cheap, was nutritious and tasted good. At that time my grocery operations were small next to those run by the families of Tamari, Qattan, Talhouni and others.

The most successful episode of my journey would start in 1955; it was only then that I started to feel financially comfortable. I was worth about JD5,000 and it was then that I bought my first Chevrolet for JD1,200, relying partly on a bank loan to purchase it. That same year, a friend of mine who was in the chocolate business in Jerusalem came to me to partner in setting up a chocolate factory in Jordan. My cousin and I traveled with him that year to Europe to shop for equipment. But while there I changed my mind and told him I wasn't interested anymore and promised that I wouldn't go around him and do it alone.

What changed my mind and captured my interest in Germany was the manufacturing process for producing hygiene paper. At the paper factory, I asked the management where they got the paper and how I could buy the machines and went back to Jordan with one idea in my mind: to start a paper conversion operation along the grocery wholesale business.

I later located the machines and the paper rolls and then went to the Industrial Development Bank and got a JD6,000 loan to start my first small plant in Sahab. I have to admit that had it not been for the bank's support I might have failed to start our Fine business.

What helped us grow fast from here and onwards was that the market was still in the early stages of its growth, expanding much faster eventually with the waves of Palestinians settling in Jordan and the expansion of foreign missions.

With my first factory in Sahab, I got a better feel for my way into the future. I was the first Arab to bring this industry into the region. At some early stage in our paper business, my cousin who was handling the market in Palestine tried to convince me to drop the market there because our costs were still higher than our revenues from selling Fine. I asked him to stay and continue his work, telling him that my gut feeling tells me that the future is in export markets, not just here in Jordan. The paper business would slowly push our food business to backstage until we later dropped it altogether, focusing on growing this industry.

Until the early 1960s, our hygiene paper business was still a slow mover, but we pushed the brand through promotions. I remember our advertisement which was the first ad to run in Cinema Zahran. People would sing along the jingle, saying: Fine is fine, Fine Ya Salam, etc... Eventually the Fine brand was on everyone's tongue; and until today it remains so. Keeping our quality up to the highest standards has also helped us keep a lead in the market.

Our first factory outside Jordan was in Egypt's October Six industrial zone. In 1985 I headed to Egypt and paid them a deposit to get a plot of land for building a factory there. Later that day, I went to the hotel and sat on the bed and thought: 'What madness have you gotten myself into. What do I do in this market which I have no idea about.' But if you don't take risks you won't go anywhere, I told myself. So I stuck to the idea and built our first pulp conversion factory there and it paid off handsomely in time.

Our operations are now vertically integrated, with pulp manufacturing and paper conversion and packaging facilities and our export market has also moved beyond the MENA region. In Jordan alone we hire around 3,000 employees, very few of which are laborers.

Our Group today is the largest hygiene paper company in the Middle East, including Israel and Turkey. I'm proud of this outcome because I started very young and had secured success in spite of the hardships and the challenging environment we grew up in.

If you ask me what has fuelled my success throughout my life, I'll tell you it would be maintaining honesty and straightforwardness with my employees, customers and suppliers, be it locally or internationally. I prefer the simplicity of living as compared to showing off my wealth. My priorities were always to look after the goodwill of the family. Until today, I still worry about the future of my grandchildren and this keeps me coming to work as early as 7am.