Sam Ayyash: the Sydney operator behind Petra, and now Board President of COON Holding
For years, Sam Ayyash has been one of the partners we call when a client needs more than a plan — someone who has actually built, exported, manufactured and scaled across three continents. Here is what he does, what he has just taken on, and why it matters to the businesses we advise.
- Name
- Samir Ayyash — known professionally as Sam Ayyash
- Based
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Current role
- Board President, COON Holding (UAE)
- Founded
- Petra Equipment & Petra Group (est. 1988)
- Experience
- 30+ years across hospitality, manufacturing, export, mining and biotechnology
- Markets
- Australia, UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Europe, USA
Most consultants meet a business after the hard part is finished. Samir Ayyash is the opposite kind of contact: an operator who started with one commercial kitchen equipment company in Sydney in 1988 and spent the next three decades turning it into a portfolio that now spans mining, contracting, healthcare, distribution and regenerative medicine. When our clients ask what an export channel into China actually costs, or how a fit-out schedule survives contact with a live hotel site, his answer comes from having signed for it.
That relationship is why we are writing this. In 2026 Sam took on the role of Board President of COON Holding, a diversified investment and operating group headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. It is a step up in scope — and a useful case study in how a mid-market Australian company becomes part of an international platform.
From one Sydney workshop to a $250M group
Petra Equipment started in 1988 supplying commercial kitchen equipment. It still does — to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools and Australian Defence Force facilities — but the offer widened into full turnkey delivery: fabrication, equipment, design and installation under one contract. Today Petra Equipment turns over more than AUD $33 million a year with around 63 staff, and sits inside a wider group whose combined revenue is roughly AUD $250 million across more than 1,500 employees.
The diversification came in deliberate steps rather than one leap. Asian Galaxy opened an export line to China in 1996, running around twenty containers a month and, for a period, nine restaurants on the ground there. CK Cell Technologies — later Endexome — moved him into stem cell research in 2010. Galaxy Mining took the group into stone and minerals in Jordan in 2021. Along the way, restaurant franchise partnerships with Seagrass Hospitality Group put him behind brands including Butcher and the Farmer, 6HEAD and Hunter & Barrel.
The pattern is consistent: buy or build something with a physical asset behind it, learn the sector properly, then use the relationships it creates to enter the next one.
COON Holding, and what a board president actually oversees
COON Holding is a UAE-headquartered group that describes itself as an active holding platform — not a passive investor. It allocates capital into asset-backed and strategically essential sectors, then stays involved in running what it buys. Governance runs from board oversight, through group executive management, down to sector leadership and the individual portfolio companies. Sam chairs the top of that structure.
The footprint is genuinely cross-border, which is the part relevant to Australian exporters:
- UAE
- Jordan
- Australia
- Saudi Arabia
- Qatar
- Egypt
- China
- Europe
- Tunisia
- USA
- Canada
Underneath sit ten operating businesses across five sectors. The scale is easier to read as a ledger than as prose:
Energy & natural resources
Al Majarrah
Oil shale exploration and development in Jordan's Al-Lajjun region, under an MoU with the Government of Jordan.
Great Zeolite
Natural zeolite mining and production under the Agrozeo brand, for agricultural, industrial and water treatment use.
Galaxy Stone
Marble, granite and natural stone — licensed quarries in Jordan and Palestine, exporting to the USA, Canada, Europe and China.
Infrastructure & construction
Asian Galaxy LLC
Multidisciplinary contracting across MENA — hotels, malls, stadiums, airports and renewable energy installations.
Healthcare & biotechnology
Endexome Ltd
First in Australia to manufacture and export proprietary stem cell–derived exosome products, produced at scale from iPSC-derived cell lines.
Galaxy Medical
Turnkey healthcare delivery since 2012 — facility construction, equipment supply, installation and ongoing maintenance.
Hospitality & commercial
Petra Hospitality
The Sydney group Sam founded: Petra Projects (design and fit-out), Petra Equipment, Petra Kitchenware and Petra Food Truck.
Trading & distribution
COON ME Commodity Trading
UAE-based structured trading in energy commodities, raw materials and industrial products, executed bank-to-bank.
MENA Vision Distribution
Consumer electronics distribution across MENA, founded in 2000, with a Jordan branch and offices in China and Australia.
Luminous Commercial Brokerage
Jordan-based brokerage and strategic advisory covering industrial, infrastructure, energy and commodities transactions.
Four things this portfolio teaches mid-market operators
We are a consulting firm, not a fan club — so the useful question is what a Sydney business turning over $5M can borrow from a group operating at a hundred times that. Four things travel well.
Own something physical. Every arm of the portfolio sits on a hard asset — a quarry, a production line, a reserve, a facility. Asset-backed businesses are slower to build and far harder to dislodge in a downturn.
Expand along a relationship, not a spreadsheet. The China export line came out of the equipment business. The mining entry came out of Middle East relationships. Adjacency beats opportunism.
Put governance in before you need it. Board oversight, sector leadership and portfolio-level execution are separated on purpose. Most mid-market firms stall because one person still signs everything.
Stay in the operating seat. Capital alone rarely fixes a business. The value came from staying close enough to the work to change how it runs.
What the partnership means for our clients
Our clients are established Australian companies — typically past $2M in turnover — asking a version of the same question: where does the next stage of growth actually come from? Increasingly the honest answer involves a market outside Australia, a supply chain that has to be re-sourced, or a category entry nobody in the room has done before.
That is where a partner like Sam changes the quality of our advice. A market study for a food and beverage brand entering the Gulf is a different document when someone in the network has run contracting projects in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. A supply-chain review for a hospitality group reads differently when the equipment side has been manufactured and shipped for thirty years. It moves our work from research to something closer to a pre-walked route.
Practically, the relationship supports our engagements in market study and research, marketing and go-to-market strategy, and the financial modelling behind an expansion case.
Sam Ayyash online
Two sources are worth bookmarking if you want to follow what Samir Ayyash is building next. His LinkedIn is the current, first-hand record; the Industry News Australia profile is the fuller written background.
Questions about Sam Ayyash
Who is Sam Ayyash?
Sam Ayyash is a Sydney-based Australian entrepreneur with more than 30 years in hospitality, equipment manufacturing, export and investment. He founded Petra Equipment and Petra Group in 1988 and now serves as Board President of COON Holding, a diversified investment and operating group headquartered in the UAE.
Is Samir Ayyash the same person as Sam Ayyash?
Yes. Samir Ayyash is his full name; Sam Ayyash is the name he uses professionally. Both appear across company records, media profiles and his LinkedIn.
What is COON Holding?
COON Holding is a UAE-headquartered diversified investment and operating group active in energy and natural resources, infrastructure and construction, healthcare and biotechnology, hospitality and commercial, and trading and distribution. It operates as an active holding platform, combining capital allocation with hands-on operational oversight of its portfolio companies.
What does Sam Ayyash do at COON Holding?
As Board President he sits at the top of the group's governance structure, which runs from board oversight through group executive management to sector leadership and the individual portfolio companies. The board sets strategic direction and supervision; execution sits with the operating businesses.
What businesses has Sam Ayyash founded or built?
Petra Equipment and Petra Group in Sydney (1988), Asian Galaxy for export to China (1996), an entertainment production company (1998), CK Cell Technologies — later Endexome — in biotechnology (2010), and Galaxy Mining in Jordan (2021), alongside restaurant franchise partnerships with Seagrass Hospitality Group.
How is Jimmy Choo Consulting connected to Sam Ayyash?
He is a long-term partner of the firm. We draw on his operating experience — particularly in cross-border expansion, hospitality, manufacturing and export — when advising clients on market entry, supply chain and growth strategy.
Planning an expansion that crosses a border?
Send us a message. We'll book a free consultation and map what the move actually takes — market, margin and the operating detail underneath it.
Chat with us on WhatsAppFigures in this article are drawn from the COON Holding corporate profile and the Industry News Australia profile of Samir (Sam) Ayyash, and are current as at August 2026. Jimmy Choo Consulting works with Sam Ayyash as a long-term partner; this profile is published for information and is not investment advice.