AUDETTE

7100 Orchard Lake Rd. • West Bloomfield • 810-851-7200

Hebron's Big Cheese

'

/19 Al-Juneidi Dairies is going head to head with
Tnuva in the battle for the Palestinian
milk-products market.

24 mo.
lease

AMY KLEIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

stone's throw from Shuha-
da Street, where the me-
dia swarm to document
the latest altercations be-
tween the Jewish and Arab res-
idents of Hebron, the Al-Juneidi
Dairies & Food Products factory
goes about its business.
\ Operating for over six decades,
the factory has transformed it-
self from a one-man operation
making fresh cheese and yogurt
to 200 employees producing
50,000 to 60,000 liters of milk a
day and sales of about $10 mil-
lion a year.

machinery, output increased and
within four to five years the com-
pany was making a profit.
In 1989, Al-Juneidi moved his
business into a new plant, the
site it occupies today.
Al-Juneidi is like a benevolent
patron. In his oddly feminine of-
fice of light, shiny wood and
mauve curtains, the factory at-
mosphere cuts in with an-
nouncements on the outside
loudspeaker system and the
small closed-circuit TV, which
broadcasts a mini Palestinian
flag.

Tease as
low as

$396°°**

THE CADDY THAT ZIGS.

TM

Loaded, Full Power

NO JOKE • NOT A DEMO • WON'T LAST LONG

00

ONLY $2$,X9 *

Purchase price only. Just add tax, plates, title. All rebates to dealer. Stk #V7624. **24 month close end lease 12,000 miles per yr w/ 150
excess. $999 down, 1st pymt., security, acq. fee, lux. lx, use tax, title & plates with approval through GMAC. Sale ends 6/30/97. All prior
sales & agreements do not apply. Stk #V7624.

Cows in a desert community in Israel.

The business was set up in the
1940s by Norman Al-Juneidi,
who brought milk from local
farmers to make his fresh dairy
products by hand. His son,
Hashem Al-Juneidi, the present
owner and manager of the dairy,
joined his father in the business
in 1967 and by the early 1980s
had taken over the delivery
routes and expanded the busi-
ness.
It was in 1982 that the dairy
really began to take off when
Hashem, then aged 38, pur-
chased machinery and know-
how from Europe for $40,000.
"I had most of the money from
working with my father," says
Hashem. "We didn't go to the
bank and get the money; that's
how it goes all over the West
Bank." Today, he says, there is
more competition and you need
much more investment, but back
then, "the important thing was
to do it right and to manage the
business well."
In 1982, Mr. Al-Juneidi, work-
ing with two other employees,
began buying 50-60 liters of milk
per day and reselling it as milk,
yogurt and cheese. With the new

Mr. Al-Juneidi's eyes dart to
the TV, which flashes to scenes
of the factory: the 24-hour guard-
ed entrance, passing trucks em-
blazoned with the Al-Juneidi cow
and logo and the pump-connect-
ed stainless steel machines
which fill the plant.
The huge, high-ceilinged com-
plex, cordoned off into sections
— sterilization, homogenization,
production, storage, salad mak-
ing and quality control — looks
like any other dairy in the world.
Each of the vat-like machines
is manned by three or four work-
ers, and the factory's operations
— from unloading the milk corn-
ing in from Thuva trucks, to boil-
ing it to kill all bacteria — add
up to a bustling, methodical ma-
chine.
By 4 p.m., production has fin-
ished and there is an overpow-
ering smell of heavy cream in the
factory, now being scrupulously
cleaned and disinfected for the
next day's work.
Twice a day Al-Juneidi prod-
ucts — hard cheese, pudding, la-
bane (yogurt with olives or

BIG CHEESE

page

68

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87