United Arab Emirates, 18 October 2023: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, has appointed women as utility operators for the first time in the company’s more than four-decade history.

The move is part of EGA’s commitment to promote gender diversity at all levels of its business. By 2026, EGA’s goal is that 15 percent of all positions at the company held by women. EGA aims to increase the proportion of supervisory roles held by women to 25 percent by 2025, from around 20 per cent today.

Utility operators are frontline non-supervisory employees in EGA’s industrial operations. EGA is a pioneer in recruiting women for these types of roles in the Gulf, and this required new international recruitment strategies.

EGA already has over 470 women working at all levels, including more than 160 in Operations but none at the utility operator level.

EGA has deployed significant resources to facilitate greater gender diversity, from developing new strategies for worker accommodation, to building facilities for women in other parts of the company’s plants which were not originally constructed with them.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said: ”Diversity drives business performance and is also good for society. We are charting new paths for women into roles throughout EGA. As we embrace this transformative approach, we align ourselves with the broader objectives of the UAE and set a benchmark for others to follow.”

In 2022, EGA opened National Training programmes for technical roles in industrial operations to women for the first time, with 11 young UAE National women joining during the year.  

The company currently has 75 graduate trainees, 49 of them women. Graduate trainees complete 18 or 24 months of training for supervisory positions in corporate functions or in industrial operations.

EGA has appointed women to nine positions on subsidiary Boards in recent years, and is a partner of Aurora50, a UAE organisation which helps prepare women for Board-level roles.