Egypt partners up with foreign company to build tires factory

CAIRO – 1 November 2022: Chairman of the Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) Mokhtar Abdel Latif announced Tuesday signing a contract with 'Hale' to build a factory that would produce tires for cars, trucks, buses, agricultural tractors, monorails, and heavy equipment.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli attended in June the signing of a quadrilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build an automotive factory in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCzone) located Eastern Port Said.

The factory, to be named EPAZ, should be able to produce 75,000 vehicles per annum in the first phase. The project is a joint venture by the AOI, The Sovereign Fund of Egypt, the General Authority for SCzone, and the Egyptian International Motors (EIM).

The MoU is the base on which feasibility studies will be carried out, as the project comes within the government's plan to localize automotive industries in the country, to fulfill local needs and export to other markets, as mentioned by the Cabinet's press statement.

The prime minister had stated earlier that Egypt imported $4-billion worth of vehicles in 2021, and that demand is estimated to rise threefold in the coming decade.

Additional reporting by Noha El Tawil