United Arab Emirates, 4 August 2022: Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today visited the company’s medical centre in Al Taweelah to personally thank EGA’s COVID-19 team, who pledged to keep EGA’s workplace safe.

EGA is a vital industrial company and a foundation of both the UAE and Guinean economies. Thousands of EGA employees remained on-site throughout the pandemic to run the company’s industrial operations and ensure the production of the metal the world needs. EGA makes one-in-every 25 tonnes of aluminium produced worldwide.

EGA has closely followed the guidelines set out by the UAE and Guinean authorities to protect its people.

In the UAE, EGA’s medical centres are permanently staffed with 65 doctors, nurses, and other personnel who are on duty around the clock to keep people safe. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, EGA deployed two additional medical teams to conduct regular COVID-19 testing of all employees and contractors working at EGA sites in the UAE.

In Guinea, EGA almost doubled the size of its medical team to support and care for employees. EGA also worked with authorities to provide neighbouring communities with vital information about protection measures, as well as with the hygiene equipment they need.

The COVID-19 team was created to monitor the pandemic and guide EGA’s responses to daily changes. The primary objective of the COVID-19 team was to reduce the pace of the virus’ spread and flatten the curve, ensuring EGA’s operations shifts continued to run smoothly throughout shifts. To date, EGA's medical teams have performed more than 350,000 PCR tests and administered over 14,000 vaccinations to employees and contractors. For more than two years now, the COVID-19 team continues to closely monitor the latest developments of the pandemic.

In addition, EGA’s safety teams conducted intensive employee education campaigns, implemented social distancing at all of EGA’s sites, installed disinfection tunnels at six key access points, and made use of more than 200 disinfection fogging machines to sanitise areas throughout EGA’s facilities.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, told the team: “Everyone working on-site at EGA during COVID-19 was a hero, and all have relied on this dedicated COVID-19 team to keep us safe every day. Your commitment to your colleagues, despite unprecedented challenges and in many cases concerns about your own families in the UAE and abroad, has been inspiring for us all. On behalf of everyone at EGA, I thank you for your work which has enabled us to continue providing the world with a vital metal that makes modern life possible, including as part of much of the equipment and infrastructure used to fight the pandemic.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, EGA partnered with Bee’ah, DP World and Masdar to launch a Vital Industry COVID-19 Task Force, a coalition of industrial companies operating across the UAE, convened to share best practices on the management of the global pandemic.