Facts about MENA's largest fish farm in Kafr El-Sheikh

CAIRO – 18 November 2017: Headed by President Abdel- Fatah el-Sisi, Egypt celebrated Saturday the inauguration of the largest fish farm in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), located in Berket Ghalioun in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate.

The project was first announced in 2014 with a three-phase plan. The idea of the project is to build a huge fish farm on 12,000 feddans using the latest advanced techniques in the field of fish farming.

The first phase of the project was completed on nearly 4,000 feddans, with expectations to cover up to 70 percent of Egypt’s domestic need of fish.

The project consists of a hatchery of fish and shrimp on an area of 17 feddans, with a production capacity of 20 million fish and two billion shrimp.

The project also includes 1,359 aquariums and 83 projects of popular Egyptian fish.
It is planned within the project’s framework that an ice factory will be built on an area of 450 square meters, with a production capacity of 40 tons of crushed ice a day, and 20 tons of ice blocks for freezing fish and shrimp.

A foam factory will also be constructed on an area of 1,200 square meters to produce fish and shrimp containers.

The project will help reduce fish imports by about 27 per cent and will provide at least 5,000 jobs for the residents of Kafr El-Sheikh as well as the neighboring governorates.
An industrial city will be built as part of the project that will include four main factories, a development and training center and a central laboratory to ensure high quality products.

The space on which drilling works take place amounts to 16 million square meters, which is six times the size of the Great Pyramid, while the iron rods required for construction works are estimated at 13,000 tons.

Ghalion products will be available by the beginning of 2018 as the shrimp farming cycle ends in December, while the fish farming cycle ends in January.