Aptec proves it has the staying power

Prominent Middle East IT distributor Aptec is celebrating three decades in business this week. Founder and CEO Ali Baghdadi officially registered the company 30 years ago yesterday and it began trading the following year.

Aptec is currently known as a supplier of commercial products for brands such as HP, Dell, Symantec and Sun, while its Track subsidiary - borne out of the acquisition of Tech Data Middle East two years ago - is an authorised Cisco distributor.

It hasn't always been that way however, with Aptec initially starting out as a London-based R&D company that had OEM relationships with printer firms Epson and Ricoh. Back in the eighties, it also laid claim to developing the first ever Arabic conversion kit for the IBM PC and produced a library of bilingual software applications.

The nineties saw the birth of a UK-based training company and an operation in Germany, before the foundations for its growth in the Middle East were put in place. Aptec now boasts subsidiaries in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and the UAE, and operates supplementary services and logistics entities.  

"Adjusting to changes in the most dynamic industry nowadays is still our biggest challenge yet and the key to our success," insisted group VP Essam Baghdady. "If there is one thing that always gets the Aptec's team pulses racing, it is a new product line, strategy or concept. This has been our recipe for staying young at heart and those looking for the comfort of complacency have moved on to other industries."

More than 500 people are understood to be employed across the Aptec group of companies. Last year the firm sold a majority stake in its business to DIFC Investments, which also has a 70% share in consumables distributor Despec.

Ali Baghdadi, CEO and president at Aptec, says the depth and breadth of skills inside the company makes it "unique". He said: "Over the years we have created and added value to every participant in the supply chain. This includes the manufacturers, resellers, service providers and ultimately the end customer who obtains the best and most effective solution."