“This year, the Egyptian citrus has no competition”

This year, Egypt is not facing much competition in citrus exports, according to Mr. Mohamed Foaad, CEO of Egyfarm for export and trading. This is due to climatic factors, which have favored Egypt and disadvantaged Spain and South Africa.

Mr. Foaad explains: “Spain had a drought problem this year, and South African farmers had technical issues that resulted in low quality and size. On the other hand, Egypt has seen a quantitative and qualitative improvement in production. This year, there is no real competition.”

As a result, countries such as Indonesia, the Netherlands, and England will significantly increase their import volumes of Egyptian citrus, according to Mr. Foaad. These countries will join mass consumers of Egyptian citrus such as Russia, Ukraine, China, and Saudi Arabia.

But will this have an impact on prices? According to Mr. Foaad, the abundance of Egyptian oranges will not translate into lower prices, quite the contrary. “Prices are starting to rise. We expect a price increase of up to 35%. This is due to the lack of competition, but also to the great demand of the local Egyptian market, which has taken off with an unprecedented pace.”

In the case of Egyfarm, Mr. Foaad said that the company will not lower its prices, but offers its customers other benefits: “We upgraded our factory with best instruments for sizing the orange. We also focus on branding and digital marketing, helping our customers to sell our produce in their market, and we put our marketing teams in the service of our customers’ salesforce.”

Egyfarm chose to specialize in the production of Navel oranges instead of producing several varieties: “We care about quality control and supply chain management more than the quantity of production, we saw that this will be better for us in the long term.”