Miller Magazine Issue: 141 September 2021

95 Country Profile MILLER / september 2021 the subsidized Baladi bread. Egypt has more than 410 flour mills, Al-Hazaa Group owns three flour mills in the country, Al-Hazaa's current production capacity in Egypt reaches 1,780 tons per day. Al-Hazaa Group is aware of the significant role that the grain milling sector and food industries have in the Egyptian market, after the pandemic our attention was drawn on the importance of having enough raw mate- rials at all times and so, we focused more on our stra- tegic storage of wheat at our mills. Therefore, we are implementing several procedures to ensure enough provision of wheat at our mills, because it is the source of many vital commodities, we increased our strategic storage capacity in Egypt and the Middle East and built new silos for grain storage, especially that the group works not only in the field of flour milling but also in grain trading, we are also increasing our milling capac- ity across the Middle East and are investing in renew- able energy to reduce production costs, the Group has a solar power plant in Jordan that supplies all its facili- ties in the country with renewable clean energy. Recently Al-Hazaa Group also acquired a new flour mill in Al-Fujairah, UAE and took access to a private wharf and ships unloading station with storage silos to facilitate unloading of its purchased vessels on the Ara- bian Sea. And with its latest acquisition of the Egyptian Millers in Egypt, Al-Hazaa Group has become one of the big players in the Egyptian milling industry that manag- es one of the largest milling capacities in the country. Its strong position in the Egyptian milling industry enables the group to export its products to neighboring coun- tries in Africa and Asia. The group has a long history in the milling field that extends to more than 80 years, it has a total daily flour production capacity of more than 4,000 tonnes in 4 countries in the Middle East. Al-Hazaa Group’s mills in Egypt sell the 72% ex- traction wheat flour that is considered one of the finest wheat flours in Egypt, private sector mills that produce 72% extraction flour aren’t allowed to produce the 82% extraction flour used for the bread subsidy program. We produce however different other kinds of flour such as flour for different kinds of bread (Arabic bread, Iraqi bread, Shrak bread, tortilla bread, fino bread, etc.), pre- mium flour for bakery and pastries, biscuits flour, pas- ta flour, noodles flour, pizza flour and much more. Our products in Egypt are sold under different brand names: Platinum flour, Dream flour, Al-Asfar, El-Moatamayez. Bread is very important in the Egyptians diet; Egyp- tians use the word “Aish” for bread, which translates to “life”, which signifies the importance of this product. Egypt produces a daily amount of 270 million pieces of bread and has more than 30,000 bakeries. The gov- ernment put great efforts in bread subsidy, it spends 44.8 billion Egyptian pound on the subsidy program to produce around 89 billion pieces of subsidized bread annually. Since 2017 bread subsidy is being implement- ed through ration cards for bread and other necessity goods, there are about 71 million citizens that benefit from these cards, which allow those who are eligible to dispense limited quantities of bread daily. All these procedures are implied to ensure that pric- es of Baladi bread remain unchanged, indeed bread prices have remained unchanged in Egypt for the last 30 years, making it the cheapest price for bread in the world, subsidized bread is sold at a price of 5 Egyptian