The tenure of Ahmed Saleh Al Noaimi, the acting chief executive officer of Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), has been nearly as long as that of Alba itself, and his rise to the top mirrors the advance of the company to a position of world leader among modern smelters.

Al Noaimi joined Alba in 1974 as a trainee as did many in the executive team. “Through this period I have seen a seven-fold increase in production,” he says. “When I joined, we were producing 120,000 tonnes per year; today we make 840,000 tonnes.”
Alba has been a learning experience for him, he says, and although he joined in a rather humble capacity, he was fortunate the company had a system in place that would promote career growth. “Because of the successful planning and development programmes we have in Alba, we managed to gain, and today I’m proud to say that the executive team is 100 per cent Bahraini, while the Bahrainisation level is 90 per cent in the management team and 88 per cent in the entire plant.”
Al Noaimi notes that that Alba is today and has always been a very important player in the aluminium industry and one of the most cost-effective and competitive smelters in the world.
“It’s not just a smelter but a number of plants within one complex with our own power station, our own carbon plant and our own coke calcining plant, and I don’t think you’ll find many smelters with that kind of complexity. I also think our people are managing it very well.”