“Showing young people that it is possible”
As a child, Abdelkrim Alahiane was passionate about football. In Casablanca, where he grew up, not a day went by without him kicking a ball around with his friends. An admirer of Roberto Baggio, Andres Iniesta and Zinedine Zidane, he dreamed of taking his idols’ place. But a visit to a mill was to change everything: “I must have been 17, and my brother-in-law worked in a mill in the Nador region. He introduced me to this trade, milling, and explained the process in detail, and something clicked. I knew straight away that this was what I was going to do later on,” he recalls.
Milling above all!
So it came as no great surprise that, after his baccalaureate, Abdelkrim Alahiane chose to pursue his studies in his second passion, milling. After training at the milling industry institute, he flew off to Libya. This professional relocation would be the first stage of a journey rich in discovery and accomplishment. “After my assignment in Libya, I worked in Dubai for 6 years, then completed my training in Switzerland, in St. Gallen. I then went to Nigeria before returning to Morocco in 2014, which is when I joined Bühler as a Process expert,” he explains. Assignments in Dubai and Saudi Arabia followed, before he took the helm of Bühler Morocco last January.
Inspiring young people
Today, his ambition at the helm of Bühler for the Maghreb region is “to encourage collaboration between all departments, from technology to engineering, sales and after-sales service. To deliver a complete solution and to be close to its customers.” Another of his challenges is to attract talent from the region “so that they grow at the same time as the company”. At Bühler, “we don’t develop the business without people; we offer career development.”
And Abdelkrim Alahiane is a perfect example of this, having become Managing Director Maghreb after starting out as a technologist. “I am keen to promote the possibility of this type of development among young people, in Morocco and elsewhere,” he says.
A close-knit family
Today, the father of a little boy and a little girl, he still plays football with his 4-year-old son. It was for his children that he settled “more permanently in Morocco, so that they grow up alongside the whole family,” he explains. He who is very happy today “to have made his family proud” wishes to pass on the same values to his children. “My father brought me up to be transparent, to be myself in all circumstances,” he states.
It is with his family, moreover, that Abdelkrim Alahiane likes to spend his free time. A cook at heart, he “is happy to cook for the people he loves”, and the dish that wins everyone over “is the vegetable tagine”. On his travels, he discovered Indian and Asian flavours with great pleasure, “but I haven’t yet tried my hand at making them.” Away from the stove, he is also a fan of action films and walks by the sea. Walks that give him “a deep sense of calm” and which he likes to “enjoy as a family”. A family at the heart of his wishes, for as he declares, not without a touch of emotion: “supporting my children as best I can as they learn about life is part of my wildest dream!”
If you were…
If you were…
– A colour, which would you be? Blue, the colour of the sky
– A country, which would you be? Morocco, for its diversity and its riches
– An animal…? The horse, for its strength
– A motto? Never give up
– A connected object? The telephone, which connects people
– A book…? “Improvisation and the theatre” by Keith Johnson
– A song…? Cheerleader
– A quality…? The constant desire to learn from life and from others
– A flaw..? I am very emotional