“I wish that one day SEKEM will be famous in the entire world”, Mohamed tells, full of enthusiasm. “SEKEM is a great model for other companies. And it is very helpful in conveying a positive picture of Egypt.” Mohamed Abd El-Ghany has been working at SEKEMs company Lotus for 14 years. Lotus processes many kinds of biodynamically cultivated herbs and spices and distributes them within Egypt and to many other countries worldwide.
The father of five children studied agriculture with a special focus on drying herbs and spices. “I already heard about SEKEM during my university days and immediately liked the idea of not using chemicals or pesticides in cultivation”, the Lotus co-worker says. Mohamed is himself the owner of a substantial plot of land (one and a half Feddan, almost one hectare) near SEKEM, which is managed by his family, and provides additional income: “I love everything connected to agriculture. That’s one reason why I am really happy in SEKEM. I learn so much about the cultivation of land and the processing of crops.”
Mohamed’s expertise improved in sync with the progress of Lotus, which was, by the way, the first company founded by Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish in 1977. When Mohamed joined SEKEM, the prosperous processing plant was located in a small house on the main farm; it moved to its new location only in 2007, which is now situated on the opposite side of SEKEMs main gate in a huge, aesthetically pleasing building. “At the new location, we strongly focused on an improvement of the workflows, for instance by integrating better machinery and new technologies. I became the production manager. That gave me great opportunities to contribute to a lot of these processes”, Mohamed proudly tells. He came up with ideas on how to increase the efficiency of the machinery that quickly showed results: costs were reduced and at the same time output per hour was increased. Mohammed is grateful for the appreciation he continues to receive from SEKEM management: “When I talked to Helmy Abouleish about my plans to optimize the capacity of the machinery – for example integrating spare parts from another of SEKEMs farms where they are not required anymore – he was really impressed of my ingenuity”.
Mohamed Abd El-Ghany is a passionate production manager. He does not only involve himself in technical issues, but also attends to an improvement of the quality of the products themselves. Besides that, he instructs his colleagues about the further development of production processes and is responsible for answering their questions concerning agriculture. He always strives to achieve the best results with his team. “In SEKEM I feel completely in the right place”, Mohamed reveals. “Sometimes I wish I could open my own organic farm or company to implement all the things that I learned during my time here. But then I realise that I do not wish to ever leave SEKEM – I see my work here as a gift of God and if I can spend the rest of my life with SEKEM, I will be a happy man.”
Christine Arlt