Active in pearl diving and trading since the early decades of the 20th century, the Al Ghurair family formalized its business activities with the creation of Al Ghurair Group in 1960. At that time Dubai was undergoing great economic and commercial growth. This development was spearheaded by the Rulers of Dubai, the Al Maktoum Family, and supported by the trading skills of Dubai’s prominent business families. Amongst these was the Al Ghurair family.

The family was the first to start a cement factory in addition to a flour mill, a sugar refinery and an aluminum smelter. It also built the country’s first shopping mall in 1981, a visionary development that spawned one of Dubai’s strongest economic sectors.

The Group’s business philosophy has always been to build strong foundations in attractive markets, and so the focus was primarily on activities that would foster the economy of Dubai and UAE. This vision and drive paid off as the Group not only prospered from Dubai’s rapid development, but actively contributed to it.

Until the 1990s, the Group was led by Saif Ahmed Al Ghurair, one of Ahmed Al Ghurair’s five sons, the others being Abdullah, Majid, Marwan and Juma. In the 1990s Saif and Abdullah decided to create two distinct, yet complementary, groups which both continued to thrive at home and expand into international markets.

Saif Ahmed Al Ghurair brought his six sons – Abdul Rahman, Majid, Mohamed, Ahmed, Rashed and Saeed into the Group which continued to expand into new industries and ventures, notably in the manufacture of packaging products and the development of the trend-setting, luxury retail mall BurJuman.

The pace of change accelerated again over the past decade with the Group leveraging its technical know-how to set up international operations in the Middle East, Africa, Australia, Europe and North America.