"There's no machine breakdown I can't fix - that's the attitude I bring to work every day!

After graduating as a senior technician and acquiring years of work experience in industrial maintenance, I progressed from a junior machinist to production manager at various Gabes-based factories operating in a variety of sectors - from pharmaceuticals to paint manufacturing. I later joined the Eco-Palm adventure in 2018.

I was the first person to join the team because I liked the project. We had to recycle the 7,500 tons of annual waste generated by the palm tree industry in the Gabes oasis.

The basic idea was to recycle palm-tree waste to make compost for agricultural use, but we soon realized that it would be wiser to use this waste to manufacture transport pallets that meet the standards of companies with ecological requirements, and to position ourselves as the first company in Tunisia and North Africa to offer this product.

We started selling our pallets locally, and we then we began to receive requests from foreign companies.

Technical assistance provided by the US government through its USAID Tunisia JOBS program helped us obtain the eco-sanitary certification needed to access international markets. We started exporting our pallets to Spain, Algeria, and Canada. When COVID-19 struck, all of our customers cancelled all of their orders. We almost lost our jobs when production came to a halt.

We refused to stand still and invested all of our time in research and development. This positive mindset enabled us to identify a new opportunity in the launch of a new kind of pallet, but we lacked the necessary molds to make it happen.

JOBS provided a grant, which financed the acquisition of the two molds, enabling us to increase our sales by 70% and double the number of employees over the following year."

Jawher Rajhi  - Maintenance Manager -  Eco-Palm