With 14 years of experience spanning logistics, production planning, and cross-border supply chain operations, the Dubai-based professional has turned deliberate career range into a regional competitive edge.
Featured Professional | Supply Chain & Procurement | UAE / GCC
THE CAREER
There is a version of a supply chain career that looks clean on paper: one sector, one function, one steady climb. Suhiel Nemat’s career is not that story, and that is precisely what makes it worth telling.
Over fourteen years and across four countries, Nemat has moved from overseeing warehouse floors in Jordan to managing end-to-end supply chain setups for one of the GCC’s most recognised fast-food brands. Along the way, he has worked inside global logistics firms, led production planning for a multinational consumer goods manufacturer, and now sits at the intersection of procurement, operations, and international expansion. Each chapter was not a detour. Each was a building block.
Based in Dubai and currently serving as Regional Supply Chain Manager at ALBAIK — the iconic Saudi-origin F&B brand — Nemat has spent the past three years doing the kind of work that does not make headlines but holds entire businesses together: ensuring that when a new country goes live, the supply chain behind it is ready.
“Every role taught me something the next one needed. I never thought of it as starting over, I thought of it as loading up.”
THE FOUNDATION
Nemat’s professional story begins not in a corner office but in a warehouse. Joining Agility Logistics in Jordan in 2013, one of the world’s largest logistics providers , he spent six years mastering the operational fundamentals that most supply chain professionals learn in theory: receiving, storage, dispatch, cycle counts, transportation coordination, and team supervision.
What distinguished this period was not the title but the exposure. Agility operates across complex, multi-location environments with exacting service-level requirements. Working within that infrastructure taught Nemat how supply chains actually behave under pressure, not how they are supposed to behave according to a textbook.
He also earned a formal certification in Supply Chain Management during this period, adding structured methodology to hands-on operational experience, a combination that would define his approach going forward.
THE PLANNING YEARS
In late 2019, Nemat made a decisive move, from logistics execution into production planning. Joining Al Fakher Tobacco in the UAE, one of the world’s leading manufacturers in the flavoured tobacco segment, he stepped into a function that required a fundamentally different discipline: translating uncertainty into executable schedules.
Over nearly four years, he led Master Production Scheduling (MPS), coordinating across supply chain, production, and logistics teams to keep finished goods availability aligned with demand. He managed day-to-day ERP planning activities across the full plan-to-produce cycle and played a direct role in new product launches, a notoriously complex moment in any manufacturing environment where forecasting is imprecise and timelines are unforgiving.
The skill Nemat developed here was one of translation: taking sales forecasts and converting them into production realities while absorbing demand fluctuations without disruption. It is a skill that sits at the centre of operational resilience — and it would prove directly relevant in the role that followed.
“Production planning taught me that the goal isn’t to predict the future — it’s to build systems that absorb it.”
THE REGIONAL ROLE
In August 2023, Nemat joined ALBAIK as Regional Supply Chain Manager, taking on scope that spans multiple GCC markets and encompasses procurement, inventory control, supplier management, logistics, and new country expansion.
ALBAIK is not a modest operation. Originally from Saudi Arabia, the brand has become synonymous with quality fast food across the Gulf and is in active expansion mode across the region. The supply chain function Nemat operates within must keep pace with that growth — and do so without sacrificing the operational standards that define the brand.
His remit at ALBAIK is broad. He has established end-to-end supply chain infrastructure for new country entries, from supplier onboarding and logistics to warehousing and go-live readiness. He manages ongoing supplier relationships across multiple regions, leads procurement and inventory optimisation, and conducts warehouse, transportation, and restaurant audits to ensure compliance and continuity.
He also works directly with licensees, providing training, operational guidance, and structured follow-up to ensure that markets operating under the ALBAIK model meet the standard. It is the kind of role that requires someone fluent in both strategy and operations; someone who can design a supply chain system and then walk into a warehouse to verify it is working.
That combination is exactly what fourteen years of deliberate career building produces.
WHAT THIS CAREER TEACHES
Suhiel Nemat’s trajectory carries a lesson that is easy to overlook in a professional culture obsessed with vertical movement: the value of lateral depth.
He did not rush from warehouse operations to a regional management role. He stopped in production planning long enough to understand the demand side of supply chain. He worked in logistics long enough to understand how goods actually move, not just how they are planned to move. And he formalised that knowledge with structured certifications alongside real-world practice.
The result is a professional whose value is not in knowing one part of the supply chain deeply, but in understanding how the entire system connects. In an era where regional expansion is creating demand for supply chain leaders who can operate across borders, cultures, and operational complexities, that kind of breadth is increasingly rare, and increasingly sought.
“The supply chain doesn’t reward specialists alone. It rewards people who understand the whole.”
THE SPOTLIGHT
Suhiel Nemat is a supply chain professional whose career has been shaped not by accident but by a consistent willingness to take on the next hard thing, even when it meant learning a new function, moving to a new country, or operating at a scale he had not encountered before.
He is currently based in Dubai, where he continues to build supply chains for one of the Gulf’s most ambitious food brands.
That is a career worth spotlighting.
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