Hamoud Boualem

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Youssef Hamoud was born and grew up in the 1830s in colonial Algeria. After the French conquest, Algerian soil was turned into a cultivation center for the rest of the French Empire. Citrus fruits were put at the heart of the country’s production, and by 1937, citrus trees covered about 10,000 hectares of Algerian land.^[2]

In 1848, Youssef started working as a laborer in one of the few factories in Algeria that specialized in the production of citrus-based drinks.^[3] In 1851, he set up a small beverage-making operation in Algiers. He came up with a recipe for a drink combining lemon, orange, and mandarin extracts and started fabricating it manually. As interest grew in his product, he recognized the need to scale up his operation and improve his production techniques. He relocated to Marseille, France where he worked as a laborer for a large carbonated drinks manufacturing plant, while at the same acquiring the advanced know-how he planned to later apply to his business in Algiers.^[4]

FOUNDING STORY

After Youssef’s return to Algeria, his upgraded drink grew in popularity and won a number of international awards between 1861 and 1878.^[5] He established his first formal manufacturing unit in the district of Belcourt (now Belouizdad) in Algiers, and began producing his “new and improved” lemonade drink under the name La Royale – which would evolve into the business’s hero product, Hamoud.^[6]

GROWTH PHASE

By 1883, the business had expanded both within Algeria and beyond, into Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.^[7] In 1889, La Royale won the prize for best drink at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.^[8] The company grew rapidly from there, and in 1907, the Victoria — a cola-style beverage — was created; it was later renamed Selecto, now another iconic Algerian drink. Youssef’s son Qaddoura became involved in the business, which was consequently renamed Hamoud and Sons.^[9] Qaddoura, however, died in an accident while his father was still alive, leading to a direct transition from the first to the third generation.^[10] The factory was no longer able to accommodate the growing demand, so the founder’s grandson Boualem built a new one on Hassiba Street, which remains in operation.^[11] In the early 1920s, he officially registered the business under the name Hamoud Boualem & Co.^[12]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Hamoud Boualem was faced with a sudden influx of global competitors such as Coca-Cola. The family’s initial reaction was to diversify and branch out into food processing.^[13] However, this was only the beginning of many challenges that ensued. In the 1940s. Colonial authorities, meanwhile, destabilized the business, imposing onerous taxes.^[14] Eventually, Hamoud Boualem was effectively nationalized, with a French partner imposed as the majority shareholder. The company ultimately went bankrupt in 1947, with a bank consortium assuming full ownership.^[15]

In 1951, however, members of the fourth generation joined by members of the related Hafiz family were able to repurchase 70 percent^[16] of the company’s shares and reorganize it into a private limited company.^[17] In 1954, when the war for national liberation erupted, the Hamoud and Hafiz families both helped finance the nationalist movement.^[18]

Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962, and thanks to the family’s backing of the liberation fighters, Hamoud Boualem was exempted from the sweeping nationalizations under the Boumedienne regime and remained family-owned.^[19] Over the next few decades, though, the company’s operations were severely scaled back due to the socialist government’s restrictions on private business.^[20]

While the 1990s were a difficult decade for Algeria, Hamoud Boualem was able to recover some lost ground as the country’s market slowly began to open up.^[21] The business revamped its production technologies, modernized its branding,^[22] signed new distribution dealerships,^[23] built several new factories, and in 2000, consolidated all its growing operations under a common group.^[24]

TODAY

Today, Hamoud Boualem group is composed of six production units, with exports reaching Europe and Canada.^[25] Locally, Hamoud Boualem’s beverages such as Hamoud, Selecto, and Slim command nearly 50 percent of the Algerian soft drinks market, well ahead of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.^[26] The company is widely recognized as the oldest Algerian company still in operation, and is seen as both a cultural icon of anti-global capitalism^[27] and national resilience, given its survival through “two world wars, an independence war and a civil war.” References to the company and its products appear frequently in Algerian music and pop culture.