I have lived in Dubai since 2008. I arrived from Germany with a suitcase and a career in automotive, into a city that was, at the time, equal parts ambition and construction. Every neighbourhood was in motion. Change happened almost daily.

What struck me most, even then, was not the pace. It was the intent. This was a country ambitious for its people and unwaveringly committed to the success of every business and resident. That quality has never faded. If anything, it has only become more evident over time.

Fast forward to today and the UAE stands as a global hub for trade, technology, logistics and advanced manufacturing. The vision of the leadership has become a reality I have had the privilege of watching take shape, year by year, decision by decision.

But it is not the skylines that make me proud to be here. It is the leadership.

Industrial Sovereignty Starts with Stability

In recent weeks, as regional tensions made headlines around the world, I watched the UAE respond with the kind of calm authority that only comes from genuine institutional strength. Swift. Professional. Decisive. Our entire team at SFG was back in the office with full confidence. Our operations continued with limited interruption, and our clients around the world were served with the usual attention and responsiveness.

That is not something you can build overnight. It is built over years of intentional governance, rooted in a leadership that has made the safety, security, and stability of every business and resident here an absolute priority. I have worked in various markets throughout my career. I know that this level of institutional reliability is rare. Here, it is the standard.

This stability is not separate from industrial ambition. It is the foundation of it. Companies scale, invest, and partner with confidence when they know the ground beneath them will not shift. The UAE has understood this from the beginning, and it is precisely why so many manufacturers, investors, and industrial platforms have chosen to build their long-term future here.

Like many businesses, we are navigating some of the wider regional complexities with agility. But the foundation beneath us has not moved. And that matters enormously when your clients, suppliers and partners around the world are watching.

We are proud to be among those who chose to stay, to trust, and to grow here. This is what believing in a place looks like.

A Family Business in the Year of the Family

The UAE has declared 2026 the Year of the Family, under the tagline Growing in Unity. It is a theme that, when I read it, felt immediately personal. Because family is not just a national theme for us. It is genuinely how we operate.

Our group was founded in 1966. That is nearly sixty years of continuous manufacturing in the UAE, built and sustained across generations by the same family, with the same values. When you walk through our facility in Jebel Ali, you meet people who have been here for five years, for ten years, for fifteen. Some for thirty. They are not employees in a transactional sense. They are people who have built long careers here, who have watched this country grow alongside them, and who bring a depth of knowledge and commitment that no recruitment campaign can replicate. That kind of continuity is not common in manufacturing. It is a competitive advantage and a source of genuine pride.

In a sector that often talks about agility and speed, the family business model offers something different and equally valuable: depth. Institutional memory. Relationships built over decades. A commitment to quality that does not shift with short-term pressures because the people making the decisions have their names on the door and intend to still be here in another sixty years.

The UAE understands this well. Family businesses contribute more than 60 %t to GDP here and account for over 80 % of national workforce employment. They are not a legacy structure. They are engines of long-term growth. And in a Year of the Family, the alignment between what the UAE is celebrating nationally and what we have been quietly living for nearly six decades feels both timely and meaningful.

Growing in unity. We have been doing exactly that since 1966.

A Diversified Composites Platform, Built Over Generations

What began as a response to the needs of the UAE’s rapidly growing construction sector has expanded, over decades, into something considerably broader. Today, our group operates a diversified portfolio of composite businesses, each serving different industries and markets, but all sharing the same manufacturing heritage, the same family ownership and the same commitment to quality.

Across the group, we serve the construction, marine, sports, mobility, renewable energy, and infrastructure sectors, producing a wide range of composite products and systems for clients across the world. From high-performance leisure craft and action sports equipment to structural composite components, water tank systems and advanced moulded parts for mobility and energy applications, the portfolio spans industries that are central to the UAE’s national industrial priorities.

This diversification is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate strategy of building composite expertise across sectors and developing manufacturing capability that is genuinely broad and resilient. No single market defines us. No single product category limits us. We are a UAE-based composites platform, export-driven and aligned with the national industrial agenda. And we are actively scaling.

More than 700 skilled professionals drawn from across the world, working together in a 53,000 m2 facility in Jebel Ali, one of the world’s most connected logistics hubs. A group structure that has the stability of a family business and the ambition of an organisation that is growing its export footprint and its contribution to the UAE’s industrial output year on year.

In-Country Value: What It Looks Like in Practice

One of the most important conversations in UAE industrial policy is about In-Country Value: how manufacturing activity translates into real, measurable economic contribution to the nation. More jobs in the UAE. More procurement in the UAE. More capability retained here rather than exported as a fee to an overseas supplier. The UAE Cabinet has just approved the expansion of the ICV programme into a mandatory framework for all federal entities and companies with significant government ownership, directing a far greater share of national spending toward local industry. MIITE 2026 has been built around this agenda, with procurement opportunities targeting the localisation of around 5,000 products within the UAE.

For us, ICV is not a programme we are working toward. It is a description of how we have always operated. Our facility is here. Our procurement, our engineering, our logistics and our production are all based in the UAE. We employ hundreds of skilled professionals working and living in the UAE, many of them for years and decades. When a client works with us, the value is generated here. It compounds here. It builds here.

Across the group, we source materials, develop skills, invest in equipment and generate export revenue from inside the UAE. Every order we fulfil for an international client is UAE industrial output. Every long-serving team member is a demonstration of what stable, skilled employment in the UAE looks like over the long term. This is In-Country Value not as a compliance score, but as a business model.

As the ICV programme moves from voluntary to mandatory across the federal ecosystem, the commercial value of manufacturing operations with genuine depth in the UAE grows significantly. Companies that have built real roots here, real facilities, real operational infrastructure, are positioned to benefit directly. We have been building that depth for sixty years. This is our opportunity to grow that contribution in step with national ambition.

The UAE’s Industrial Vision Is Not a Slogan. It Is a System.

What has always impressed me about the UAE is that its ambitions are matched by architecture. There is a plan, Operation 300bn and the National Industrial Strategy, and then there is execution. Exports doubled. Targets set for 2031 reached six years early. A manufacturing base built not to ride a commodity cycle, but to generate genuine industrial value regardless of what global markets are doing.

This happened because the UAE invested, deliberately, in the infrastructure that resilience requires: logistics, free zones, financing instruments, talent attraction and a regulatory environment designed to make building here genuinely competitive. When global supply chains came under pressure, the UAE did not scramble. It was already positioned.

For a group with our history, this is not background noise. It is the environment we have operated within for nearly sixty years and the environment we are now actively scaling within. We are not simply fulfilling orders. We are scaling a UAE-based composites platform that exports globally and aligns with the national industrial priorities the UAE has set. That is a deliberate choice, and it is one we intend to deepen.

Scaling Together: The UAE’s Industrial Ecosystem in Action

The UAE has committed serious capital to enabling the next phase of industrial growth. A Dh1 billion national industrial resilience fund has just been approved, alongside expanded ICV requirements, new structured financing programmes and 36 active trade agreements reaching more than three billion consumers worldwide. The instruments are in place. The national ambition is clear.

This is what makes the UAE exceptional for a platform like ours. The government does not simply set targets and step back. It builds the financing structures, the trade frameworks and the policy environment that allow export-driven manufacturers to grow in alignment with national priorities. For a composites platform that is already operating, already exporting, and ready to scale, that kind of ecosystem is not background noise. It is an accelerator.

We are not building despite the environment here. We are building because of it. Sixty years of manufacturing in the UAE has shown us, repeatedly, that when this country commits to an industrial direction, it follows through. The instruments now in place for the next phase of growth reflect exactly that. And we intend to grow with them.

Business Goes On. And That Is Exactly the Point.

When I look at what the UAE has built, the infrastructure, the institutions, the industrial vision, the culture of delivery, I see a country that has earned the confidence it carries. Not because nothing goes wrong, but because when things do, the response is measured, professional and effective.

Our team is focused. Our operations are running. Our clients are being served. And our conviction that this is the right place to build, to manufacture and to grow has only deepened.

We are here. We are open. And we are proud.

Proud of the country that has given us the platform to build something meaningful across nearly sixty years. Proud of the leadership that has consistently made decisions in the long-term interest of the people and businesses who call this place home. Proud of every member of our team who has chosen to build their career with us, some of them for decades. And proud to be a family business that is not just operating in the UAE, but growing with it, contributing to its exports, its industrial identity and its future.

Meet Me at MIITE

I will be at Make it in the Emirates 2026 in Abu Dhabi from 4 to 6 May. If you would like to meet, reach me at ines@sfgcomposites.com.

Ines Polewka
Business Development Director, SFG Composites
sfgcomposites.com