HHM Group

About the Co-founders and Founding Story

Brothers Hasan and Habib Mahmood were born and spent their early years in Bahrain in the first decades of the 20th century.^[4] Throughout their young adulthood, they were employed, like many in the region, in maritime-related activities^[5] such as fishing, pearling, ship building, and the pearl trade.^[6] Having acquired extensive experience in the local shipping industry and a deep knowledge of the regional sea routes,^[7] the brothers established the Hasan & Habib Sons of Mahmood Company in 1938 as a shipping firm transporting goods between Bahrain and the rest of the Gulf region.^[8]

Growth Phase

With the onset of the Second World War, the company began to expand as the brothers won contracts to supply general goods and foodstuffs to Britain’s Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, and Army garrisons in several locations around the Gulf.^[9] They were ultimately appointed as the official suppliers to the Forces of Queen Elizabeth II in the Gulf,^[10] in which capacity they served until the withdrawal of the Royal Forces in 1967.

In the late 1950s, large-scale dredging and land reclamation started in Bahrain, with the goal of expanding the land area of the Manama and Muharraq regions of the Bahraini archipelago. Within that context of national development and transformation, the Hasan & Habib Sons of Mahmood Company began venturing into real estate, leading to the creation of a construction division that remains a key part of the business today. The Mahmoods’ business thrived and grew, paralleling the physical growth of the island of Muharraq, which by 2000 had quadrupled in size as a result of the ongoing land reclamation campaign.^[11]

The company’s wholesale food supply branch also continued to expand, and the company eventually launched a catering operation, providing services to key government and private clients. In the 1960s, the brothers established two new companies: Eastern Bakery, and the Gulf Cold Storage and Ice Plant Co., to which a water purification unit was added in late 1967.^[12]

In 1975, the Mahmoods’ various companies were consolidated under the rubric of the Hasan & Habib Mahmood Group (HHM Group), and the second generation officially took over the group’s leadership, with Ali Hasan Mahmood as chairman and Fareed Hasan Mahmood as CEO.^[13] In 1978, an interiors division was established to supply both wholesale and retail furniture, fixtures, and domestic appliances to contractors, decorators, and property owners. In 1979, the group opened a fine foods division and began retail sales of foodstuffs and consumer goods.^[14] More recently, the group has set up a chemical subsidiary, Gulf Industrial Chemicals, and started a campaign with STC Bahrain in 2021 to fight air pollution and rising temperatures by increasing green spaces in Bahrain.^[15]

Today

Today, HHM Group has expanded into one of the largest companies in Bahrain, with 26 diversified subsidiaries in food and beverage wholesale and retail, catering services, real estate, and logistics that employ over 700 people.^[16] HHM Group trains and hires young Bahrainis for technical and administrative jobs, reflecting its longstanding commitment to helping the government address the country’s unemployment problem.^[17]