Producing Steel Reinforcements in the Maghreb

He was working in investment banking as an options trader, then he understood he had an entrepreneurial vocation and entered Sicilferro, the family company based in Torrenova, nearby Messina. Since then, it was 2009, Cristiano Scùrria, 36 and holding a Bocconi degree in finance, has expanded the reach of his family's business, which produces steel reinforcements for the concrete structures built by the construction industry. After contacts in Angola and the Philippines, Scurria had the idea of building a new plant in Tunisia. "The idea came almost by chance, as I was following an infrastructural project there. As I got back to the country, I took a contract with me to buy two hectares of industrial land. From there, everything took off." After five years of activity, Sicilferro Maghrebine now employs 30 people (eighty, counting business spillovers) and works 15,000 tons of steel a year. "We are involved in the building of 50% of Tunisia's new infrastructure," the entrepreneur says about the company he founded, where he is also CEO.

However the company is a rarity in the economic landscape of the Arab country, as Scurria emphasizes: "Most foreign companies implanted in Tunisia exclusively work for offshore markets, taking advantage of low labor costs and tax benefits (such as total tax exemption on profits made by firms exporting 100% of their production), explains the Sicilian entrepreneur from the company's HQ in Ben Arous. "We decided to do things differently, by setting up production in Tunisia and sell to the domestic market, thereby facing the local competition". The business environment he found was accessible. "Starting a new business is a bit easier than in Italy. What is hard at first is having to deal with a work ethic that is different from the one prevalent in Europe. To this, in our case, you must add the additional difficulty of having to train our personnel".