A licensed plot, ten months of waiting, and six months of study

Founding stories are usually told for the inspiration. The useful version is the sequence: what was done, in what order, and which decisions were still paying off six years later.

This factory was started by a pharmacist who had never worked in manufacturing or in supplements. Dr. Mohamed Anwar graduated in pharmacy from Mansoura in 1990, began his career in Saudi Arabia, and spent roughly 28 years in pharmaceutical marketing and medical representation, ending in 2018 — most of it in marketing, latterly at an American multinational. He holds an MBA, where by his own account the thing he actually learned was cash flow.

The industrial-plot route, and what it involves

The starting point was a government industrial-development programme offering a licensed factory plot — the kind of scheme marketed as "build your factory". He applied while still employed and, in his telling, forgot he had applied.

An allocation is permission, not a business. What the programme hands over is a plot in an industrial zone with a licence envelope for a class of facility. Everything that makes it a factory — building, utilities, machinery, registration, certification, people — is still ahead of you, and it is the expensive part.

The wait is the first real cost, and it is paid in optionality rather than cash. Ten months passed between application and allocation, and in that period you can neither commit capital to a site you do not have nor responsibly resign from the job funding the plan. He did neither: he kept working, and the day allocation was confirmed he resigned and spent six months studying — numbers, site specification, equipment sourcing, products, positioning. The lesson generalises: structure the waiting period so that waiting is cheap.

Sadat City, where the plot was, proved an advantage on supply and a disadvantage on hiring. Then the build: fit-out, machinery, factory registration and quality certification ran from 2018 to 2020, with production beginning in 2020. Two years produced nothing sellable. That is normal, and it is the part first-time manufacturers compress on paper.

On how much study is enough he is unsentimental in both directions — study before you start, and then stop:

You will never build a plan that is 100% free of mistakes. I rely on one thing: if you have 70% clarity, shoot. Don't chase perfection. You'll keep updating as you go.

Why the groundwork at the start set the speed later

The clearest return on those two slow years was one number: listing on the National Food Safety Authority's White List took three months, which he attributes entirely to how the facility was set up.

We got it in three months because the setup was right. The more you start right and build right, the more it really is three months. It isn't a difficult subject.

Approval timelines are mostly decided before any application is filed, because an inspection examines what you either built in or did not: separated people and material flows, classified areas with the air handling to hold them, a water system designed against dead legs, documentation that works as a system, and a quality function with real authority. Retro-fitting any of those into a finished building means knocking something down.

So the rule: treat regulatory requirements as design inputs on the drawings, not as an approvals exercise that begins once the building is finished.

What that listing covers is in the NFSA White List is a factory licence, not a product approval, and the engineering behind it in what Class D actually means.

One caveat for anyone using this as a template: Egypt had seven licensed supplement factories in 2020 and 41 by 2025. Being licensed is the entry fee now, not a differentiator.

Hiring into a company nobody has heard of

This was the hardest problem, and the one most start-up plans ignore: an entity with no name and no history, asking people to leave established employers for Sadat City. He did not solve it with money.

The first magnet I could create to attract talent was to draw them a proper system — so a person is reassured they'll get their rights, and at the same time they'll be working in an environment they actually like.

The quality system and the certifications in progress were recruitment assets before they were client-facing assets. An unknown company cannot offer prestige, but it can offer a credible structure, and technical people read structure accurately. Every hire then went through intensive training in food safety, quality and manufacturing.

Around that, three decisions worth copying — plus one habit: he worked the floor himself first, so that when he sat upstairs he would understand what happened downstairs.

• He hired on character first. Values and principles, then appetite for learning and flexibility to hear another opinion, technical skills last — because technical skills can be acquired and personal qualities largely cannot. He used his multinational interviewing experience to assess the first two.
• Salaries were at market, not above it. What he offered instead was training, including consultants brought into the factory to teach his own technicians.
• The core team took about three months, and the first department was accounts — one person covering accounts, purchasing and HR. The instinct is to hire production first; cash and purchasing control are what you cannot run on goodwill.

Giving quality authority over yourself is structural, not a slogan

From day one the quality team's word carried over the owner's, on explicit reciprocal terms: authority in exchange for zero defects.

The quality department is the number one department in the factory, and its word goes over mine personally. That is the reality, and everybody in the factory hears it.

Nearly every factory says something like that. Read structurally, it is doing real work, for two reasons — and the owner has to be seen losing an argument occasionally for either to hold.

In a contract plant the commercial pressure always points one way. A client is waiting, a shipment is booked, a batch is borderline. If the person who releases that batch reports to the person who owns the delivery date, the decision is already made. Separating the authority removes the conflict instead of asking an employee to withstand it alone.

It was paired with absorbing the cost of error. He carried mistakes financially himself rather than let a colleague who trusted him carry them, while distinguishing honest error from laziness or carelessness. Authority without that pairing produces quality managers who quietly stop using it.

For a buyer it reduces to one question on a factory visit: who can stop a shipment, and who do they report to? That is where how to audit a supplement factory in one visit begins.

The first order, and where growth came from

The first client was a pharmacist colleague and the first product was honey, which the licence already covered — the start of the food side in the first product this factory ever made was honey. They celebrated that order the way an employee celebrates a first salary.

The first year was hard, and a forecast built before launch proved as far from reality as possible. Early trial batches ran at the factory's own cost and lost money, deliberately: he wanted to prove the process to himself before asking a client to trust it. That economics is in "I already have a formula".

Growth then came by word of mouth, and he is clear-eyed about where that stops:

Word of mouth brings them to the factory door and makes them knock. But word of mouth stops there. After that he has to see validation.

Referral gets the meeting; certifications, documentation and a visible system close it. Which is why he sums his position up in one sentence — he competes on quality, not on price — and accepts losing the enquiries that were only ever about price.

If you are doing this now

• Budget the wait, and keep earning until the allocation is in your hand.
• Put the study in before the money, then stop at around 70% clarity.
• Expect two years between allocation and sellable product, and finance them.
• Put compliance on the drawings — flow, classified areas, water, documentation, quality authority. It is the cheapest it will ever be, and it buys your approval timeline.
• Hire accounts and purchasing before production, and recruit with a system rather than a salary.
• Give quality real authority, write down what it is in exchange for, and be seen to lose an argument.
• Price early trial batches as marketing spend, because that is what they are.
• And know what you are entering: 41 licensed factories, not seven. Being allowed to manufacture is no longer the differentiator — what you do with the first two years is.