Enlightening field trip to Egypt
Gerard Busse, Value Chain Manager; Nana Cobbina, Africa Certification Manager and Carmen Mabianda, Membership Manager had a very enlightening field trip to Egypt in June.
The trip started in Alexandria on the Monday, with a visit to Senghor University. This Francophone University offers 35 Masters’ programs, operates in 16 countries with 42 partner institutions. We met with Rector, Professor Thierry Verdel and Director of the Sustainability Department, Professor Etotépé Sogbohossou, who is also an FSC International member to explore academic and learnership collaboration in the Environmental and Sustainability fields.
On our way back to Cairo, Tuesday, we stopped at El Baragga Printing Press, in Mirgham, Alexandria a family-owned printing business which is FSC certified. We then proceeded to Etapco Paper mill in Borg Elarab City, a paper mill making kraft liner board and fluting, which is FSC Recycled Certified.
On Wednesday, we visited Papco 10th of Ramadan City, Cairo and met Wael Safy, Head of Quality Control. Papco is the largest paper cup manufacturer in Egypt, and a divisions of packaging conglomerate PETCO. PETCO and Papco are FSC certified.
We then met up with staff of Certification Body, SGS at their Cairo office: Ahmed Hoosam (Business Unit Manager), Reham Magdy (Operations Manager), Nihal Gaber (Alexandria Key Accounts) & Ahmed Moussa (main auditor).
On Thursday, we visited Al Moutaheda Paper and Board (UNIBOARD), El Obour City. The FSC representative was Mohammed Ibrahim Zaki. The company is part of National Printing Group, which consists of Uniboard, El Baddar, Shorouk for Modern Printing – all are FSC certified. El Baddar makes corrugated cardboard. Uniboard makes coated white board. Shorouk for Modern Printing produces duplex office paper.
We then headed over to The Centre for Applied Research on the Environment and Sustainability at the American University in Cairo. We met with the team headed by Dr Yasmine Kamel Abdel-Maksoud, (Senior Technical Manager) to find out more about their environmental research initiatives, such as bamboo restoration and agro-forestry pilot projects.
Later that afternoon, we met with Taha Wally from Mohamed Mahmoud Sons Group. M & M Group is a conglomerate group in the automotive, consumer electronics, Telecom, tractors and packaging sectors. The packaging division consists of Egyptpac, New Finepack, Intepac and ELF producing corrugated boxes and paper. Interpac, New Finepack and ELF are FSC certified.
We also met up with Moaaz Eldeweak, TUV Austria Partner, Sustainability Scheme Manager, who provided certification insights to the Team.
Some reflections on the trip:
There is a desire for more technical and marketing support, and COC training workshops would be really appreciated. Certificate holders and institutions were interested in the FSC membership proposition, and were interested in becoming more involved in FSC. There is a very robust recycling sector in Egypt with a number of paper mills relying on recycled materials to produce FSC recycled outputs.