Middle East Health speaks to James Michael Lafferty, CEO of Fine Hygienic Holding about the company and its focus on wellness.
Middle East Health: Can you give Middle East Health readers a bit of background about Fine Hygienic Holding?
James Michael Lafferty: Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH) is MENA’s market leader in consumer paper. This constitutes tissue paper, toilet paper, and kitchen towels, as well as baby and adult diapers. We are celebrating our 62nd year, and we are dual-HQ in both Amman, Jordan, where we were first founded, and Dubai, UAE.
We employ over 3,500 people across multiple markets, and whilst our business is focused on the MENA region, we actively sell in 75 different countries across the world.
Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH)
FHH is a company founded on strong values. Doing the right thing and operating with the highest levels of integrity; offering superior products that deliver good value to consumers; taking care of our employees as our single most important asset.
MEH: Focusing on the healthcare industry specifically, what products does the company produce for this market?
JML: In an effort to continually evolve and improve, we have identified “Wellness” as one of the globe’s key trends leading to the year 2050. Despite advances in healthcare, we are not seeing an overall improvement in health or life expectancy. Obesity rates are rising. New diseases emerge.
As a result, we have consciously pivoted our company from “just paper products” into a company that helps provide better wellness to our consumers. A pillar of this is hygiene, and hence the name “Hygienic” in our company designation. We have innovated to bring technology into our products that improve wellness. We offer the world’s only 100% sterilised tissues. All of our products are fully sterilised coming off the production lines and packaged for our consumers. Our diapers are specially formulated to offer superior skin health to both babies and adults suffering from incontinence. Hygiene and skin protection are key elements of wellness. The skin is, after all, the body’s largest organ!
We are leaders not only in the athome segment, but also away-from-home markets. We specialise in offering tissue products for the healthcare industry. This is crucial for an industry that continually suffers from facility-wide infections like MRSA. Knowing that the hospital or clinic has one less area to worry about – as our paper tissues are 100% sterilised – brings better peace of mind. We have partnered with the Medical Wellness Association, based in the USA and representing global leaders in medicine and wellness, to offer certification programs and training for healthcare facilities to improve their overall sanitation. Using sterilised tissue products, which are available throughout any such facility, is an important part of an overall world-class hygiene standard.
We developed and tested extensively our “Steripro” process, which uses UV technology to render our products germfree upon packing into the consumer unit. We are also currently in testing with a breakthrough technology which would render the tissue germ-free throughout opening of the pack and in use. This is a revolutionary technology from Switzerland, and we would hope to qualify it and market it by 2020.
MEH: Is the company bringing out any new products aimed at the healthcare sphere?
JML: As wellness is an overall corporate direction, we are actively seeking to expand our portfolio into other areas of wellness, specifically beverages and nutritional supplementation. We are in talks at present to acquire various companies, but at this stage we are unable to comment further. But stay tuned!
MEH: Focusing on the Middle East – are there any social responsibility initiatives that the company is or has been involved with?
JML: We at FHH believe in giving back to the societies we work, live, and play in. Our flagship CSR program – Khair Al Koura – is one we are particularly proud of. This initiative is the first of its kind in the region, one that addresses numerous factors to better the lives of the residents of Al Koura – a community located north of Jordan where Fine is empowering people to help themselves through providing them with income generating opportunities and educational programs.
We also have different initiatives tailored to the needs of each country as well as support a multitude of charities in each of the 4 countries we operate in.
Furthermore, we are currently in negotiations with a leading NGO to offer a pan-MENA program, of unprecedented scope, in which we would donate a portion of our product sales to support underprivileged children and mothers. This will be announced soon.
FHH is on an exciting journey. Our core business is growing at double-digits. We are aggressively expanding into new markets and also into acquiring our way into new categories. The future is bright!
