You own the recording
Nothing is published without your sign-off, and you can withdraw it at any time — including years from now.
Aluminium BahrainAlumni · Built By Icons
A private network for the people who built Aluminium Bahrain — from the first pots in 1971 to the fastest smelter line the industry has ever built — to find each other again, to put on the record how it was actually done, and to be reachable by whoever tries to build something like it next.
Why now
Bahrain found oil first in the Gulf, and had the least of it. In August 1968 it answered that problem by decree: a smelter, in a country with no bauxite, powered by the gas it did have. First hot metal ran on 11 May 1971 — 120,000 tonnes a year, and the first aluminium smelter in the Middle East.
Five more lines followed. Line 6 took first hot metal in December 2018, built in twenty-four months against an industry standard of thirty and about sixteen per cent under budget — the fastest smelter line in the industry’s history — and made Alba the largest single-site smelter in the world at about 1.6 million tonnes a year.
And an industry grew around it: Midal and Balexco in 1977, GARMCO in 1981. By 2015 Alba was 30 per cent of everything Bahrain exported that was not oil. Eighty-seven per cent of its people are Bahraini.
Almost none of how that was done is written down. No chief executive of Alba between 1971 and the early 1990s is named in any public source, and neither are the 1968 shareholders. And Alba has no alumni network — nor does any other Bahraini institution we checked, in English or Arabic.
Legacy
The archives hold what was produced. They hold almost nothing about how a bureau was opened, what was argued about the week before a launch, or what any of it cost internally. That sits in a few hundred heads, and there is no other copy.
One hour, once. A recorded conversation about something you made happen — what the problem was, what you decided, what it cost, what you would do differently. Not a CV, and not an interview about the industry.
Nothing is published without your sign-off, and you can withdraw it at any time — including years from now.
Your period, your function, what you built. Thirty minutes to add.
Attached to the moment you were part of, so you are found by people looking for that moment.
You choose what is visible, and to whom. Nothing is public because we put it there.
Impact
An archive nobody can query is a cupboard. Somebody is about to attempt what you already did.
A ministry establishing a news network. A central bank licensing its first Islamic institution. A university building a research arm from nothing. A founder opening a bureau in a city where the rules are unwritten. Every one of those problems has already been solved — by someone who is no longer asked.
A question about how something was done returns the answer of the person who did it, attributed, in their own words.
The person looking for you does not know your name. They know what they are stuck on.
From being quoted, to a single call, to sitting on the team that builds the thing.
Where it goes
The directory is not a memorial. It is where the people who need what you know come to find you — and every approach reaches us first, never you directly.
An hour of your judgement, at a rate you set. Someone building the same thing pays to skip a year of mistakes.
Longer engagements assembled around a brief. You take the ones that suit you and decline the rest.
Producers looking for someone who was actually in the room, not another commentator.
Conferences and internal sessions that want the person who made the decision, not a summary of it.
Institutions that need someone who has already been through what they are about to attempt.
Journalists who would rather get it right than get it first.
Someone thirty years behind you, asking the questions you once asked.
Teaching the method to the people who will need it next.
You set a rate regardless, for two reasons that have nothing to do with income. It filters out unserious requests. And it protects everyone behind you: if the most senior people work for nothing, the market for the people thirty years younger collapses. Where the fee then goes is a separate decision, and it is yours.
The default. No explanation required, and none asked for.
Paid directly to a charity, hospital, university or scholarship you nominate. It never touches your account.
Fees accumulate into something permanent — a scholarship, a prize, a fellowship that carries your name.
A stated number of hours a year to institutions that cannot pay. Shown on your profile as a commitment.
Your email is never published and never sold. Every request comes to us, reaches you with the sender’s identity withheld, and goes no further unless you say yes. You set your own rate and keep 70% of every advisory fee.
Six ways to take part
Most members start with one and add another later. None of them requires you to be looking for anything.
Add your name, your period and your function to the founding directory.
One profile. Thirty minutes.Record one interview about something you built or lived through.
One hour, once.Take occasional paid advisory calls in your area of expertise.
You set the availability.Join an assembled team on a commissioned build.
By mandate, when it suits you.Guide someone earlier in the career you already had.
A few hours a quarter.Name the people who must be in this network, and open the door.
Introductions only.What we promise you
This is the part that matters most, and it is not negotiable.
The expertise we are assembling
Most networks collect the executives and stop there. The people who made Alba work were spread across every one of these, and the ones hardest to find are rarely the ones whose names appear in the annual report.
The heart of the plant, from the first 120,000-tonne line in 1971 to Line 6 — including recovering cells after a power loss.
Ingot, billet, slab, rod and the move into value-added and recycled metal.
Anodes, and the 2002 decision to bring calcined coke in-house.
The power stations that make the whole thing possible, and the gas supply the country argued over.
Lines 3, 4, 5 and 6 — including the twenty-four-month build that set an industry record.
Forty-two million working hours without a lost-time injury, and how a plant like this gets there.
Selling the metal, and the downstream industry — Midal, Balexco, GARMCO — that grew up beside it.
Running a listed state-anchored industrial company, and taking the workforce to 87 per cent Bahraini.
The full history
Era by era, with the difficult chapters, the people who built it, and — at the end — an explicit list of the questions no public source can answer. That last section is the reason this page exists.
What we are asking for
Join the founding directory: your period, your function, what you built. Thirty minutes.
Sit for one recorded conversation about something you made happen. It becomes part of the archive.
Name three people who must be in this network — and, if you can, make the introduction.
The founding directory
Members who asked to be listed publicly. Everyone else is here too, privately.
No names yet. The first will appear here as members are approved.
Tell us what you need. We pass it to them with your name withheld, and they decide whether to take it further. We come back to you either way.
Add your name
Aluminium Bahrain
Five questions, about ten minutes. Nothing you write here is published — it goes to the directory, private by default.
Alba Alumni is an independent initiative created by former colleagues. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a property of Aluminium Bahrain. The Alba name is used here only to describe who this community is for. If the bank chooses to support the project, that relationship will be stated openly on this page.
If you helped build any of this, you belong here — and so do the people you worked with. Please pass the link on.