WDS: Al Marar committed to keeping the Edge

Today, the UAE military represents some 90% of Edge’s business, with just 10% coming from international contracts. However, this is changing rapidly and achieving a 60/40 UAE/international business backlog split would represent a major transformation for state-owned Edge.

“If you take the trajectory we had – we made $60 million in orders in 2019, now [in 2023] it is $2 billion – this is the target we strive for and it’s a healthy and doable one,” said Hamad Al Marar, Edge Group’s new managing director and chief executive.

In 2023, Edge Group as a company achieved total revenue of $5 billion, he said. Alongside this it booked orders worth $5 billion, giving it a total order backlog totalling $10.8 billion.

Edge appointed Al Marar, who has spent four years in the group’s senior management team, latterly as president of its Missile and Weapons cluster, to the top job on 1 February.

In an interview with Show Business, Al Marar stressed that Edge’s strategy to develop and manufacture defence products and systems for the UAE armed forces remains unchanged, as does its aim to do this locally.

To accelerate and aid this drive, the group has been extremely active in acquiring 12 overseas companies in the past two years, with others in the pipeline. Edge is able to make a swift decision on a deal if it makes sense, said Al Marar.

While more businesses will join the Edge family, for Al Marar a major priority for 2024 is product delivery. “It is important to understand that we are slowly recovering from the Covid dislocations of the supply chain,” he said.

Supply chain issues have impacted some Edge programmes and Al Marar wants improvement this year. “We are not immune to the issues,” he noted.

Asked about the biggest strategic challenge Edge faces, Al Marar pointed without hesitation to talent attraction and retention.

The company has a unique position that combines its diverse workforce of Emiratis alongside colleagues arriving from Europe, Asia and elsewhere to make an attractive employment proposition, said Al Marar.

“We are one of the very few companies with so many nationalities working on the same programmes which has created an intellectual migration component for Edge.”