Moroccan Entrepreneur Shakes Up Spanish Wine Industry with Eco-Friendly Canned Brand

Born in Morocco into a modest family, Sana Khouja has worked hard to become a businesswoman with a promising future. At the age of 30, she created "Zeena", her canned wine brand, a first in the Spanish wine world. "The idea was to create sustainable products adapted to new consumption trends," she explained in an interview with Publico.

To read: Moroccan-Spanish Entrepreneur Launches "Zeena" Canned Wine, Disrupting Traditional Market

"We are not competing with the wine bottle, we are expanding the market. The wine industry has been mainly run by men, but in recent years, more and more women have invested in the sector. In my case, as a woman, a Barcelonan and the daughter of immigrants without a university degree in oenology, I may have had everything to fail," said the young businesswoman, proud of her origins and her journey.

To read: Morocco’s Spanish Wine Imports Surge 23% in 2021, Reaching €110 Million

For Sana Khouja, "being a woman is the best thing that has happened to [her]", she who has spent "years being ashamed of [her] origins and hiding [her] nationality". The young woman admits that she has not experienced any form of discrimination in Spain, probably because she is "blonde and white". But she thinks of those foreign women "with a darker complexion", or who wear the veil, who continue to be discriminated against because of race, religion or social status.