For the future

Aller Aqua has plans to expand a year after opening new plant

Danish feed firm Aller Aqua first entered the Egyptian market in 2009. Last year it cemented its position with the opening of a new factory near Cairo, the most modern in Egypt and the result of its acquisition of a family owned company in the region.

Aller Aqua Egypt chairman Henrik Halken said at the feed plant’s inauguration in March 2015 that they hoped to triple sales and when Fish Farmer caught up with him he said things have been going ‘fantastically’. There is an investment plan for the coming year and the group is looking for another feed plant.

‘There are around 91 million people there and they eat a lot of fish and the population is not decreasing – on the contrary, it is growing. When you look at 2050 maybe there will be 140 to 150 million people.

‘They have to eat every day so the market is naturally growing every day. Either you eat chicken or fish – beef is too expensive – and there is a big tradition to eat fish in Egypt, which is a good thing for us.

The market is also growing because the way they are feeding the fish is changing.

‘In the past, they were using trash feed, getting off-cuttings from the fishing industry in the harbours, chopping it up and feeding it to the fish. And some were using cheap poultry feed.

‘Whatever they did it wasn’t the proper diet to grow tilapia. Now we have come into the market we are producing extruded feed as we do in Europe and elsewhere and that means they can produce tilapia with much less feed than they used to.’

Halken admitted last year that operating in Egypt has had its challenges, with all that has happened in the country politically.

‘We experience daily challenges, which we wouldn’t even contemplate in Denmark. For the first year it could take up to three days to get petrol for the trucks transporting raw materials to the factory – great planning was essential for success.’

During the 2013 revolution, when President Morsi was overthrown, Aller Aqua had to accommodate all its employees at the factory.

But Halken said they had made a ‘huge’ in-