By Basma Tharwat
Kaha for Preserved Foods, affiliated to the Food Industries Holding Company, aims to complete and develop five production lines with investments of EGP 100m in six months.
Mohamed Atef, Kaha’s Chairman, said the company placed a plan to develop and renovate production lines at the beginning of the current fiscal year (FY) 2015/2016. The plan is set to be executed before the end of the third quarter (Q3) of the year.
The plan includes developing and modernising the production lines of the juices, jams, frozen foods, and tomato paste, as well as adding a new production line for legumes.
Kaha has achieved sales worth EGP 35m in the last eight months, and EGP 42m in exports, according to Atef, who added that the company aims to increase its exports by 15%-20% during the next year.
Arab countries acquire about 65% out of the total exports from Kaha, while the company plans to increase this rate in the coming years, especially in light of its strategy to increase its participation in the conferences and the exhibitions abroad.
Atef explained that Kaha for Preserved Foods will participate in an international exhibition in the UAE next month, following the success of its participation in two exhibitions in Sudan and Ethiopia last year.
He further explained that the decline in food exports over the past years was caused by the security and political unrest in Egypt and other Arab countries, especially Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
Kaha owns seven factories in Qalyubia, Sharqeya, Alexandria, and Beheira, including 19 production lines for juices, jams, concentrates, in addition to the packages. The factories’ production amounts to 115,000 tonnes of products annually.
The company achieved sales of EGP 77m, including the local market and exports, in FY 2014/2015, 10% more than FY 2013/2014.
Kaha has sales points in many governorates, most prominently Ismailia, Sharqeya, Cairo, and Alexandria. The company plans to increase them to about 27 ports in the next FY 2016/2017 in order to cover all the country’s governorates.
In the same context, Kaha’s Chairman said the company will launch a public auction next month to make use of Kaha Hyper Market, which is located on a space of 5,000 metres, including a storeroom, a show room, and a café.
He explained that the company established sales points for its products on the ground floor of the hyper market, aiming to better exploit the other available floors through proposing them to the investors.
Atef noted that the processing of agricultural products is necessary for the Egyptian economy, especially as the industry plays a significant role in creating jobs and decreasing unemployment.
He added that the development of agriculture products’ processing has a significant impact on many other industrial sectors, whereby it contributes to enhancing agriculture and increasing the added value from crops, in addition to decreasing their waste levels.
He demanded that the government pay more attention to agriculture products processing, and encourage launching integrated projects through facilitating the procedures of allocating the lands in the same area of the farmlands. He added that the majority of the factories operating in Egypt are located away from the farmlands.
He further noted that Egypt has all the required elements to develop agricultural product processing, such as plentiful cheap labour, capital, governmental facilitation, an environment suitable for investment. In addition, the materials needed for the processing process are widely available, such as vegetables, fruits, cotton, flax, sesame, sugar cane, beet, etc.
