EBRD extends EUR 2.1 mn financing package to Egypt’s Farm Fresh

One of Egypt’s leading frozen fruit and vegetable exporters, Farm Fresh, signs a financing package  made of a  €2.1 million loan with European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) to increase its production and expand its revenues.

Family-owned Farm Fresh, which employs around 200 people, will use a €7.3 million financing package to build a modern factory in Alexandria, with high-tech production lines and new machinery and equipment for sorting, blanching, freezing and packaging fruit and vegetables.

The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) and the EU have extended a EUR 7.3 mn financing package to frozen vegetables exporter Farm Fresh to build the new Factory.

The EBRD will provide a EUR 2.1 mn loan and Ahli Bank of Kuwait will lend EUR 2 mn. The EU, meanwhile, will provide a EUR 300k investment grant in addition to a EUR 2.9 mn equity contribution from existing shareholders.

The modernisation will make Farm Fresh more efficient and the expanded capacity should allow it to triple its production of frozen fruit and vegetables, the vast majority of which are exported to the EU and the USA.

That in turn will support the businesses of local farmers who provide all of the company’s fresh produce.

In addition, Farm Fresh was established in 1987 by the Boulos family and is an Egyptian joint-stock company. It started by producing and exporting frozen molokhia (or Egyptian spinach) and okra. Now its wide range of products includes peas, spinach, sweet corn, green beans and strawberries for an expanding global market with consumers increasingly oriented towards healthy food.