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An interview with Ali Boumediene
Please introduce our readers to your company
Bomare Company was founded in 2001. Its current capital is DA 620 million (US$5.6 million) and its production covers two major fields: the manufacture of electronic and telephone apparatus (televisions, smartphones, tablets, satellite receivers and professional display screens) under our own brand Stream System and international brands, and subcontracting for the automobile, aeronautics and renewable energy industries.
Our 15,000m2 factory is located at Birtouta, in the province of Algiers. The company employs six hundred people, of which 40% are managerial staff, engineers and masters.
You have successfully managed to develop a company in the electronics sector. What are the keys to this success?
At the beginning, I started by importing and distributing finished products from abroad. At the end of the 1990s, I decided to stop importing and launch a manufacturing business in Algeria, based on agreements and technological partnerships with international industrial groups, mainly in Asia. The company and the commercial brand Stream System were created side by side.
My idea was to target both the Algerian domestic market and exports straightaway. In these conditions, it was essential for us to be competitive, both in terms of costs and product quality. We started by manufacturing satellite receivers, a very significant market in Algeria.
For the second product, televisions, after setting up an automatic assembly line between 2001 and 2005, we started to manufacture main boards for digital televisions and other products in 2006. The integration rate is currently more than 40%.
Bomare Company focuses much of its effort on training. In October 2016, the company signed a partnership agreement with Universal Instrument Corporation, the US leader in electronic assembly automation, and the University of Bilda, Algeria. This agreement mainly provides for the development and execution of research, training and vocational orientation programmes that are coordinated or shared between the three partners. The first concrete action was to provide the university students and researchers with an electronic board production line for all types of industry, with a value of US$1.5 million.
Another key to our success lies in the desire to achieve the highest possible standards of production and management systems. In 2011, we obtained the ISO 9001 (version 2008) and RoHS 18001 (version 2007) certifications for our quality management system. Our goal is henceforth to obtain the ISO 14001, version 2004 certification, which is being finalised. We have all the necessary certifications to be able to export to the European Union countries.
What is your international strategy?
We started exporting in 2007 and we achieved a US$6 million export turnover in 2016. I gave priority to the European market from the start given the geographical and the cultural proximity. We sell into two countries–Spain and Portugal–where we have established respectively after-sales service structures.
We envisage launching our business in France and Italy in 2017 before expanding to other European countries. We are also interested in Africa and we are in negotiation with distributors in several countries.
How do you see the future and what projects do you have?
The medium- and long-term strategy is focused on moving our products and processes upmarket. We intend to continue to offer increasingly sophisticated services in both national and international subcontracting.
Our 2017 goal is to achieve a 75% integration rate by 2020 and to create a research and development centre. We favour the constitution of a real ecosystem for the electronics industry in Algeria. Lastly, we intend to increase our manufacturing capacity for new products. This is an ambitious challenge, but one which I believe is within our reach.
Visit www.bomarecompany.com
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©OECD Yearbook 2017. See www.oecd.org/forum/oecdyearbook
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