ABSTRACT
After about one hour’s driving from Cairo, on a constantly jammed highway along the Nile bank, one reaches the town of Helwan, 25 kilometres south of Cairo.
Overlooking the Nile to the west, and with the ruins of Memphis and the Saqqara pyramids in the background, Helwan is another one of the many meeting places between ancient Egypt and today’s industrializing society: the prestigious Helwan iron and steel works, the fertilizer plant and the numerous cement plants. Here, on the borderland between the fertile strip of river bank and the desert in the east, El Nasr Automotive Company (NASCO) was established in 1960, in accordance with governmental decree number 913.
