Another company is heeding the government’s call to restart local foil production: Suez Canal Authority subsidiary Port Said for Engineering Works is set to establish a USD 80 mn aluminum foil factory in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) in partnership with an unnamed Chinese investor, Al Borsa reported citing unnamed sources it says have knowledge of the matter.

The details: Construction on the project — which received its feasibility studies two weeks ago — will kick off in 1Q 2025. It will have an initial production capacity of 60k tons a year and plans to increase it to 100k tons by the end of the first year of operation.

The project is set to help meet growing local demand: The nation’s annual consumption of foil now sits somewhere between USD 120-140 mn, according to Industry Ministry data that Minister Kamel El Wazir recently emphasized to the House. This equates to the local consumption of 46.7 mn tons of aluminum foil annually, member of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce’s home appliances division, Sherif Abdel Moneim, previously told EnterpriseAM.

Despite the demand, there’s not a single factory currently producing it: After having been among the first countries to produce foil and being self-sufficient, the two factories that produced foil in the country faced financial pressures and rising raw material and energy costs, forcing them to halt production to avoid accumulating losses, Chamber of Engineering Industries head Mohamed El Mohandes previously told EnterpriseAM.

Large local demand and the lack of domestic production is racking up the nation’s import bill: Among other heavily imported items, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi recently pointed to the state's import bill for foil — most of which comes from China — that totalled USD 512 mn between 2014 to 2023. Noting both the material’s import bill and importance to other industries, El Sisi called on investors to step up and help revive the industry.

Port Said for Engineering Works isn’t the only one with a foil factory in the works: EGX-listed Egypt Aluminium (EgyptAlum) is also looking to launch a USD 100 mn foil production line with an annual capacity of 50k tons — that will potentially be funded by German rolling and foil slitting technology specialist Achenbach.

**We did an Inside Industry deep dive into the country’s efforts to restart local foil production last month. Read the story here.

TURKISH, CHINESE INVESTMENTS IN EGYPT’S SANITARY WARE INDUSTRY-

Turkish and Chinese investors provide the capital to launch three new sanitary ware factories: The Cairo Chamber of Commerce’s sanitary ware division has secured some USD 50 mn from unnamed Turkish and Chinese investors to launch three sanitary ware factories, division head Fawzy Abdel Galil told AlMal.

The breakdown: Of the two Chinese-owned factories, the one in Sixth of October kicked off operations earlier this month and the second in Sadat City is set to be inaugurated early next year. The third is a Turkish-Egyptian-owned project being set up in Sadat City that should kick off production in early 2025.

Tags: