Foreign investors circle aquaculture sector after EU export green light

Egypt’s aquaculture sector is casting the net towards the Mediterranean and European markets, courting investment pitches from Greece and Algeria for farmed fish imports, a senior government official tells EnterpriseAM. The interest follows the European Union’s approval of imports of Egyptian farmed fish following two years of testing. Cyprus and Turkey are also expected to submit pitches in the coming period, our source adds.

How big is the catch? Foreign investors are eyeing up to 21 immediate FDI prospects across the Red Sea and Mediterranean, out of the total 57 state-identified sites earmarked for large-scale aquaculture and processing. The EU approval instantly unlocks 160k-200k tons in European demand with Egyptian tilapia — which makes up roughly 1.2 mn tons of the country's 1.6 mn tons in total fish output — the prime candidate for first shipments.

The bottleneck? We currently operate only 10 canning and processing factories, well short of what export scale would require.

Why this matters: Securing the European export window provides a much-needed hard-currency lifeline for local fish farms. After years of struggling to cover imported feed on domestic revenues alone — which accounts for 75% of production overhead — producers now have the income margins to scale up production for the European market.

No better timing: The push for exports comes as Egypt reaches 92% self-sufficiency in fish, up from 80% in 2021, head of the Lakes and Fish Resources Protection and Development Agency, Salah Moselhi, tells us. The government successfully “reduced the import volume from 400k tons to 78k tons by the end of 2025,” he adds.

What’s next: First shipments are expected to sail this summer, with a strict export quota in place to protect the local market. “We expect to receive the formal approval in July, and to begin exporting 20 days into the month,” Moselhi tells us, as the decision officially comes into force 20 days after EU ratification. Around 70 farms are already coded and cleared for immediate export, with the rest of the country’s 7k farms entering the EU certification pipeline, our source says.