By Paul McNamara

Sharjah is the emirate where investment today offers the prospect of sustained returns tomorrow.

Sharjah is the future-centric emirate and the perfect antidote to the crazy consumption that is sometimes evident in modern Arab societies. Its present efforts could make Sharjah a household name in the renewables sectors.

The harsh desert climate of the UAE can be the enemy of those who are for the natural environment. Sharjah’s Bee’ah has set itself some lofty goals for environmental change. Bee’ah is an integrated environment and waste management company, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Sharjah.

Khaled Huraimel is group CEO of Bee’ah, a public private partnership and the first such environmental management company in the Middle East. He says, “One of the first problems we began to tackle when we set Bee’ah up in 2007 was one of waste. The UAE has one of the highest per capita rates of waste generation in the world, almost 2.5kg of waste per person per day. So we began by building an infrastructure in Sharjah to overcome this waste challenge. Since then we have started to tackle other environmental areas too, including water quality and air quality. We are about to launch a project that will let us monitor the air quality all across Sharjah. We are looking at the water pollution levels in the lagoon that we have here that is a tourist attraction. So I think the UAE has led the region in this area.”

Keeping abreast of these environmental challenges has been made more difficult with the fast growing numbers of residents. Huraimel says, “One of the big challenges is the growth of the population, the construction and development. This has led to further problems of waste and air pollution. We are addressing these challenges.”

But tacking these issues comes at a price and a hefty investment in technology and equipment. As Huraimel puts it, “We now have the most advanced infrastructure in the region when it comes to treating waste. The target we have set for Sharjah … is zero waste to landfill, which will make us the first city in the Middle East to achieve that and one of the very few in the world to achieve it. Bee’ah has built various facilities where all the municipal solid waste material is received and segregated and recycled. We have tyre recycling facilities that produce tiles from rubber that are already used in Sharjah in jogging tracks, playgrounds and so on. We have a construction waste recycle facility that takes all the construction site waste and creates different grades of aggregates that are used in infrastructure projects.”

Introducing Tandeef

Indeed, Bee’ah has introduced a number of initiatives recognising that different sorts of waste requires different sorts of treatment for recycling. “We have Wekaya that is a joint venture for medical waste collection and treatment. So we have taken a lot of steps to build the infrastructure. We are not just responsible for treating the waste but for collecting it too. We have a company called Tandeef that is a waste collection and street cleaning company and we have just upgraded our fleet completely. We have vehicles that work on electricity, on solar power, on low sulphur diesel. We have also invested in technology so that all 500 vehicles have tracking devices, route planning systems to save fuel and resources. We aim to have sensors in the bins themselves so that we will know which bin is empty and which is full and this helps automatically to plan the route of collection trucks,” says Huraimel.

Little surprise that Bee’ah has been recognised for its achievements in the Middle East for the past three years as the winner of the award for the best waste management company in the Middle East. To date 60 per cent of the waste that is produced in Sharjah is diverted away from landfill with a target of zero waste to landfill. “One of our upcoming projects for next year is waste energy so that means that whatever we cannot recycle and reuse will be diverted to this new facility and will be converted into clean energy and this will achieve zero waste to landfill. It is a very big project and we are looking at expanding outside the region,” according to Huraimel.

Bee’ah has opened offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh and sees Saudi Arabia as a very big market with a lot of demand for what it has to offer. “We want to promote this industry in the region and to make Sharjah a hub for international companies that want to play a role.”

Huraimel is not naïve enough to think that future growth will be easy as there are some natural challenges to face: “One of the biggest challenges we face is public awareness. Another challenge is regulation, for example what do you do about people who continue to throw litter on the roads? We are not a government body, we cannot enforce this so we are working closely with the municipality to support them and help them with the legislation to tackle these challenges.” What seems assured is that Bee’ah’s determination and strategy will serve it as well in the future as it has in the past.

Growth in the tourism market

Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi represents the next generation of Emiratis addressing the challenge of delivering on the growth strategy of Sharjah. She is chairperson of Shurooq, the Sharjah Development and Investment Authority.

One of the areas that Shurooq is promoting most heavily is that of developing the tourist market. This is an area that faces some big infrastructure challenges. Sheikha Bodour says, “The biggest challenge is finding the balance between development and preserving our national heritage. We have a lot of projects that focus on environment, for instance. Ecotourism is a big part of what we do at Shurooq. We have many projects in protected areas. We want people to appreciate what we have in the UAE. This is a challenge that we face daily.”

These are the sorts of challenges that would be tough enough in a developed market with a plentiful and well-trained workforce, but in an emerging nation it can be a strain. “The other challenge we have is managing all of the projects at the same time, because we have a great number of projects being developed at the same time. We also have a number of projects in the pipeline that we have not announced yet.”

Shurooq focuses on four main sectors: tourism, healthcare, infrastructure, and attracting investment into Sharjah and the authority promotes all of these projects internationally. But how does one go about promoting Sharjah while Dubai and Abu Dhabi are grabbing all the headlines? Sheikha Bodour says, “It is very important for us to distinguish ourselves from our neighbours because we offer something different. We want to complement the other emirates. We want people to come and see the beauty of Sharjah. We have a huge project, the Heart of Sharjah, which is a 15-year project and is based on the first built city in Sharjah with the ruins of old houses and we are developing that into a destination. It is very important for us to remain true to our heritage and Islamic culture but at the same time open up so that people can come and see what we have to offer.”

Opportunities in healthcare

It is this savvy reliance on playing to strengths that marks out Sharjah’s development initiatives. While tourism is a major part of this, so too is attracting foreign direct investment. It is here that Shurooq focuses most attention. “We work closely with other bodies. Sharjah Healthcare City is an example of this and this is an area where foreign direct investment is welcome, in the healthcare sector here,” says Sheikha Bodour.

Marwan Jassim Al Sarkal, CEO of Shurooq agrees, “We work very closely with Sharjah Healthcare City to attract hospitals to come here and set up. There is a huge opportunity for investors to come and set up hospitals and medical institutes. However, we also try to make sure that whatever we develop is for local demand. We are not trying to promote Sharjah as a healthcare destination but we want to provide services to the people living within Sharjah.”

Inevitably major investors want to be seen where the growth opportunities are most plentiful and Shurooq skilfully acknowledges this and turns its to its advantage. “We border all the other emirates and this make us unique. We have three free zones in Sharjah: the airport free zone, the seaport free zone and the healthcare free zone. These are very important in attracting investment into Sharjah. During the financial crisis we were hit the least of any emirate because our economy is very balanced and diversified. We have a very strong manufacturing base. No one sector contributes more than 5 per cent of GDP.”

It is this diversity that gives Sharjah most of its strength. Sheikah Bodour says, “The market size and business cost is the strongest message we can give prospective investors. Thirty three per cent of the UAE’s industries are located in Sharjah and most of them are SMEs. We have a competitive cost of doing business because we have a good, strategic location, low cost of living and low labour costs.”

Sarkal says, “History shows that most investors in Sharjah are from the region so we are talking about the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait then we have the secondary market and we are looking at North Africa and Asia. The third sector would be Europeans and Americans.”

The region faces a number of challenges and none is more pressing than the issue of youth engagement and employment. Sharjah may not have a very loud voice, but it has a lot to shout about. The last few years have seen a concerted effort by Sharjah to promote itself on a global stage amongst the core elements of its target market. It has also taken the opportunity to start to address some of the systemic macroeconomic issues facing Sharjah and the rest of GCC.

 

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